Death of Anna Banana

Anna Svidersky 1988-2006

She was excited about graduating from High School in a few weeks. She was excited about becoming “legal” in six days. She worked at McDonald’s. Her life was cut short while she cleaned the tables.

Anna Svidersky, 17, was stabbed to death while working at McDonald’s a few blocks from the High School she attended. The man held in her death, identified by Vancouver police as David Barton Sullivan, 28, is a registered Level II sex offender. The police say that there was no evidence that Anna and her killer knew each other.

Anna, like all the “cool” kids, had a website on myspace.com. You can look at her site here: http://www.myspace.com/sceneslut . If you spend a little time with Anna on the web, you will find that she was first of all beautiful. She seems to have a group of friends who like to take modeling-type pictures of themselves. There are several pictures of Anna on her webpage. She said she was “[obsessed]” with Photoshop and she shows some real talent with graphic design and photography. There is no telling what she could have been or what she could have done.

People who knew her consistently say she “had a good heart.” She was like a lot of the Russian kids who live in Clark County, Washington, hard-working and bright. She worked a pretty full schedule at McDonald’s while going to school. She said, “Working makes the week go faster.” She also seemed to be quite popular at parties.

She was a senior in High School and just six days away from her 18th birthday when she died. Like a lot of soon-to-be adults, she was impatient for what she perceived as the adult life. Her pictures and general web-persona have a sexual overtone; she even changed her screen name to “[lovely] will be legal in 6 days”. I think when my generation was her age we were as obsessed with sex as a lot of these kids seem to be, but we didn’t have the World Wide Web to feed and disseminate our obsessions. If I was still 18, I think I would have wanted “Anna Banana” as a friend.

Information on the suspect is still pretty sparse. Under Washington law information about Level II sex-offenders is available to specific groups (such as residents of a neighborhood where the offender lives, and day car centers), but only available to individuals if the information is relevant and necessary to that person. I expect we will be hearing more about this man, David Barton Sullivan, over the next few days, but here’s what we know now.

Sullivan was convicted in 2003 of unlawful imprisonment with sexual motivation; in 2001 he tried to kidnap a 14-year old girl from the Naydenov Gymnastics Center in Vancouver. After the 2001 incident, Sullivan spent 90 days in Western State Mental Hospital, where he was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. He was deemed competent to stand trial, plead guilty and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. In 1999 he was convicted of two counts of Fourth Degree assault with sexual motivation. All three offenses were in Clark County, Washington.

Here is a picture of the suspect. It comes from the Vancouver Columbian. It also includes a school picture of Anna Svidersky:

http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews/04212006news22099a.cfm


Sullivan was tracked by police canine units and arrested a few blocks away from the McDonald’s on Andresen Rd, minutes after the stabbing. Police found a knife, which they believe is the murder weapon, discarded close by. Sullivan is being held without bail in the Clark County Jail. His arraignment is scheduled for April 28, two days after Anna would have turned 18.

A little time researching this crime and Anna’s short life, leaves me with an overwhelming feeling of sadness. This is a feeling I share with a lot of young people in Vancouver tonight. I have been in email contact with some of Anna’s friends and they seem to share the feeling that more than anything Anna’s life was too short.

For more on the suspect in this case read this post This is Too Much