Yeardley Love: Guilty Verdict the Inevitable Climax of Tragic Story

It's been nearly two years since George Huguely V was arrested and charged with the murder of Yeardley Love. Huguely was arrested shortly after Love was found dead on May 3rd, 2010, and was charged the very next day.

The story became national news immediately, and it was relevant to the sports world due to the fact that both Huguely and Love played lacrosse for the University of Virginia. The sports world had just seen another college lacrosse scandal a few years earlier, one that was ultimately unraveled, yet here was another.

On Wednesday, it was determined once and for all that the Huguely/Love case was for real. As reported by the Washington Post, Huguely was found guilty of second-degree murder in Charlottesville, Virginia. His trial lasted just two weeks.

Though the general public and the media have a bad habit of jumping to conclusions, there was little doubt that Huguely was guilty of something in this case. It was established early on that Huguely had gotten drunk and confronted Love in her apartment, and that violence had occurred. Huguely even admitted to police that he had grabbed Love, his on-again, off-again girlfriend, by the neck and wrestled her to the floor.

Once the case got to trial, the only real question was whether Huguely had caused Love's death, or if, in the words of his defense team, he had merely played "a role" in her death. Was it murder, or was it an accident?

The prosecution argued that Love had died from blunt-force trauma to her head. The defense argued that she had suffocated in her blood-soaked pillow.

"That could do it," said a defense expert, per the Post.

The jury ultimately ruled that it was clear either way that Huguely did not plan to kill Love, but the verdict they reached indicates pretty clearly that his actions were the direct cause of her death. Blunt-force trauma or suffocation, Love would not have died that night had Huguely not shown up and done what he did.

The guilty verdict is a fitting climax to a story that only got uglier and uglier as more and more details came out. The immediate storyline of a jock athlete killing his girlfriend was tragic enough, but it only got more tragic when the larger storyline of their relationship came to light. The narrative of it was building towards something bad, which just so happened to occur on the night of May 3rd, 2010.

Climax or no climax, this is not where this story ends. There is no relief for Love's family, nor is there any relief for Huguely's family. The trial may be over, but both of these families will be forced to live their lives knowing how different things could have been. Nevertheless, what happened cannot be undone. The guilty verdict does not change that.

This tragic story will remain a tragic story.