Residents of Kennett Square and Chester County, who haven’t yet pulled out their hair, are trying to enjoy our annual mushroom festival this weekend in downtown Kennett. After all, we are “The Mushroom Capital of the World” as our water tower brags, and the annual festival is the biggest event of the year in our little town. My 17-year-old son is a volunteer at the festival, selling fresh mushrooms directly to the public as part of his responsibilities for a National Honors Society student at Kennett High School. All good for the town, school, and festival, even with a convicted killer on the loose, but here’s the thing: my son is Brazilian-American, and his features and coloring look just like escapee Danelo Cavalcante, right down to the dark, curly hair and mustache (I almost asked my son to shave it off this week). The only thing that sets my son apart, gratefully, is his height. He’s ten inches taller than Cavalcante.
As a mother of a teen who looks like this convicted murderer, I worry about the stares he’s receiving from people in town and at the festival. Our community is still walking around on edge with a brutal killer on the loose, although we may be pretending to look and act cool as cucumbers while peddling and buying all things mushroom. In past years, tens of thousands of people have attended the festival throughout the weekend. At least, that’s how many have attended when no known killers were lurking in the woods and farmland that surround our town. This year, I have no idea how many people will attend, but I can’t help but wonder how many festival-goers will shout, “Oh, shiitake!” when they see my son. “You look like the murderer, only taller!” I imagine them saying, as they drop their shiitakes, cremini, and oyster mushrooms all over the ground.
It makes me sick to my stomach to think that a Brazilian or Latino in our community who looks like Cavalcante, and wearing a hoodie or hat, might be mistaken for him, and some of them may be adolescent boys because of Cavalcante’s compact size. With helicopters flying overhead yesterday morning, my husband took out the trash as I stood outside in the 92-degree, staring at our dying plants, and yelled, “Come on, hurry up! Let’s get back inside,” waving me over to the patio door, “I don’t want them looking down and thinking I’m him because of my white t-shirt!”
We both haven’t slept well since the helicopters began patrolling five days ago, and I don’t know anyone who has over the last week. Our home is located very close to Longwood Gardens where countless police cars and helicopters have become part of the landscape. So how is law enforcement sleeping? With the 24/7 effort they're putting into this hunt, I can't imagine they are catching any quality Z's either, which can't be good. But bad and unexpected things happen all the time, don’t they? People are mistaken for others. Mini murderers slip through cracks and scale “secure” walls when prison guards make mistakes.
We’re grateful that no one has been additionally attacked by Cavalcante since his escape, especially when he broke into homes in our area. We’re also grateful to law enforcement who have kept residents and their children safe these last ten days. We hope and pray that these same officers, state troopers, and even residents, in our culture of guns and Second Amendment enthusiasts, don’t lose their patience after two weeks of searching for Cavalcante, growing more desperate to “catch a killer” but catch or kill a lookalike instead. Because then my family and I would lose our shiitakes.