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Everyone agrees that the teenagers dropping rocks from the highway overpass had no idea who was behind the wheel of the approaching Honda Civic.
The rock, the size of a bowling ball, exploded through the windshield with the force of a cannon shot. Julie Laible, a 32-year- old college professor, was gone before her Civic rolled to a stop a few hundred yards down the highway.
Her life's mission had been to give minorities, particularly Mexican-Americans, the same social and educational opportunities as white Americans.
Nineteen-year-old Juan Cardenas, charged with murdering Julie Laible, could have been a subject of her study.
Almost 30 years ago, for a better life, his mother moved from Mexico to the United States, picking fruits and vegetables across the nation. In the 10th grade, Cardenas dropped out of high school to work full time in the fields beside her, until about a year ago, when he and his family found jobs making neon signs.
It makes for an easy story line: Young woman who tried to help minority youth killed by minority youth. Except that the people who knew Laible best say she would hate it cast that way.
"Her story lends itself to a cheap irony. Three young men of color, exactly the kind of people she was trying to help," said Jerry Rosiek, a colleague from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
"Oh, gosh, isn't it terrible - a cute, middle-class, nice white woman attacked by thugs of color. How ungrateful can they be?' That was exactly the prejudice Julie...