Denise Crosby: Nightclub stabbing nightmare defies explanation

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Daniel Olaska has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with a fatal stabbing in Naperville. | Submitted February 4, 2012

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Updated: March 9, 2012 8:11AM

It’s a statement I’ve uttered repeatedly over the years as the kids have grown into young adults.

Thank God they’ve survived the knucklehead years.

You know the time frame I mean: from high school through college, when parents fall asleep with a prayer on their lips that they don’t get the late-night phone call forever altering the course of their lives.

We see it too often. Kids drink and drive. Do drugs. Hang out with losers. Take reckless dares. Get into fights. Or, despite solid upbringings, do something equally lame that backs up the scientific data proving human brains don’t fire on all cylinders until a couple years past adolescence.

Which is why parents lecture their kids a lot during those idiot years. One bad move, one rash decision, we tell them (ad nauseam), and you live with the consequences the rest of your life.

Besides lecturing and praying, we cross our fingers — sometimes our toes. If we are lucky, the kids make it unscathed into their mid 20s. They get their degrees. The find jobs and wonderful mates and we release a sigh and thank our lucky stars our son and/or daughter is finally launched.

Then we read headlines like those this past weekend ... and we wonder if we are ever going to be able to sleep at night.

A much-loved 24-year-old second-grade teacher is dead. His 22-year-old friend wound up in intensive care. And a 27-year-old former Eagle Scout is sitting in a DuPage jail looking at 30 to life.

“I’ve had a lengthy police career,” Naperville Police Chief David Dial said of this case, “and I’ve never seen anything that made less sense.”

Reports indicate there were plenty of witnesses who saw the fight break out at Frankie’s Blue Room in downtown Naperville early Saturday morning. Yet no one seems to be able to comprehend how a comment North Central senior William Hayes made to Daniel Olaska about the fact he was drinking beer from a wine glass would escalate to the point the latter would allegedly pull out a 5-inch folding knife, much less use it.

But police said that’s what Daniel Olaska did, seriously injuring Hayes and a bouncer, and fatally stabbing Spring Brook Elementary School teacher Shaun Wild, who, according to reports, was nobly trying to defuse the crazy situation.

Defense attorney Earl Grinbarg described the actions of his client, an Eagle Scout and church youth leader, as a “grotesque aberration.” From what we’ve heard so far, Daniel Olaska, a lifelong Naperville resident, seemed to be an all-around good guy. He has a master’s degree and was a hard-working manager at Schaumburg Regional Airport. He also has a supportive family and church, whose members are working to raise the money to get him out of jail. His bail has been set $3 million.

All of which adds to the surreal nature of the crime. This sort of violent and senseless act is supposed to involve a bunch of losers with fried brain cells in a sleazy backroad bar — not young educated professionals in a downtown Naperville pub.

“Nothing,” the Olaska family wrote in a statement released on Monday, “could have prepared us for this tragedy.”

Those words, like everything about this case, are an unsettling reminder to parents: Even if our kids are launched, safe landings are never guaranteed.