'None of those were mercy killings': A vigil for disabled people killed by family
LOS ANGELES — In the Burbank chapel, as attendees braced to hear the names of the dead, Pastor Ryan Chaddick welcomed the sparse crowd with familiarity.
"I'm here tonight, and we're doing this," said Chaddick, dressed simply in black, "because for some reason in 2023 we have to say to the world that killing disabled people is wrong."
It seemed ridiculous, he said, to even have to announce that.
"But as long as disabled people are killed for being disabled," he said, "I will rage against the night and we will light candles as protest and we will cuss and we will pray."
Roughly a dozen people had trickled into the Burbank church on that frigid evening at the beginning of March to mark Disability Day of Mourning. To hear the names of people killed by parents and other relatives or caregivers. To listen to poems, songs, and readings about the outrage of disabled people losing their lives to those who were supposed to safeguard them.
For the Lutheran pastor, like many others in the chapel, the horror of those killings hits home. He is an autistic man, diagnosed in adulthood. He is
