When you love the ponies as much as Carmela, no trip's too far to watch the third leg of the Triple Crown live. So when she asked whether she could accompany me to Kennett Square to hear the latest news on Barbaro last week, "It's press only" wasn't a suitable response.

Well, off we went the next morning, around the trucks hauling bales of hay and up and down winding country roads past farms and rustic cottages to Penn's New Bolton Center. Carmela sported a red Saratoga Springs racetrack T-shirt and hat. The only red on me was in my head, as in the blood of a horse about to be put down, probably by sunset.

Morbid, I know. But realistic.

Let's be frank: The only reason about a dozen satellite trucks lined the driveway to a overflowing parking lot in an otherwise peaceful nook was because the Deathwatch was On.

During the hour-plus ride, Carmela mentioned she had a bad feeling. That when she saw the eyes of the Kentucky Derby champ whose condition is now daily international news on TV last night, she saw an animal that knew it had reached the end. It was the same look she saw in the eye of the legendary Seattle Slew right before it passed away in 2002. How sad, we agreed.

LIFE VALUES: A day after what many thought would be a press conference held to announce Barbaro would be put down, the horse chomps on a carrot. Meanwhile, police still have no answers for Heggs' murder.

Thanks to traffic, by the time we arrived, Barbaro's doctor Dean Richardson had already told an auditorium jammed with wide-eyed reporters, one of whom gripped a replica horse-leg bone, that things were as bad as Carmela thought. Seven weeks and five days after shattering his leg in the Preakness Stakes, Barbaro suffered "the most feared complication." Asked about Barbaro's chances of survival, he'd said, "I would say poor." Mulling the prospect of euthanasia, Richardson conceded, "If you look at this horse, it'd be hard to put him down."

Carmela seemed rather concerned when someone relayed this info. After all, it's hard to not to empathize with people like Richardson, trainer Michael Matz and owners Roy and Gretchen Jackson. They love this animal like family, because it's part of theirs.

I can even empathize with Carmela. When you love the ponies, it's a big deal when one that could've been among the best might soon die.

But on the ride home, I got to thinking about the anonymous well-wishers who order carrots by the caseload and ship them over to an animal hospital that's decorated by 4-foot-high get-well cards covered with signatures. About how we're almost at the point that Barbaro's bowel movements qualify as breaking news. By the time I got back to the Philadelphia Theater of War, I knew why:

We the people care more about an animal than we did about Damon Edward Heggs.

I don't want to preach about priorities or pour on an all-too-obvious guilt trip. But when North Philly can share a sentence with southern Lebanon, the reality is this: Curfews won't make a difference. And 100 new cops sure as hell can't plug a dam that's already burst.

It's time for all of us to collectively mourn more for people than we do for a horse. If we don't show the most desperate among us that we value their lives more than an animal's, they have no reason not to kill indiscriminately.

Which brings me back to Heggs. Never heard of him? Well, you wouldn't have unless you sifted deep into the paper on Barbaro banner-headline day and found a three-sentence blotter item headlined, "Man, 32, is shot and killed in Strawberry Mansion."

The story's familiar. Bullets fly during early-morning drive-by in a nasty neighborhood buffered by cemeteries. One catches a bystander in the back. Someone drives the bleeding victim to Temple University Hospital and takes off before telling anybody who the man is. Nineteen minutes later, before his loved ones even knew where to find him, he dies. Alone. The homicide victim tote board hits 143. No snitching means no arrests.

In the weeks since she buried her only child, Marcia Heggs hasn't been deluged by gifts from anonymous well-wishers. Her son's case has garnered no daily updates on CNN. My call last week marked the second time someone asked about the case; the first was from one of Damon's childhood friends who wanted to write an article about him.

Marcia explained that her son was a good kid. He went to Overbrook, ran a cleaning business and had a 3-year-old daughter. He didn't smoke, drink or have enemies. He didn't get in trouble.

"The police," she said, "assured me that it was a wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time thing."

Well, the 2500 block of North Napa Street, a narrow side street bordered by a slew of abandoned shells off of Lehigh, is definitely the wrong place.

"I tried to get him to move out," said Marcia. "The first time I went to visit, we were waiting outside and all of a sudden I hear shots. We were just trying to hurry up and get in the house. Damon wasn't used to that gang and corner stuff. I didn't think he belonged there."

Shortly after Damon got shot, Marcia again found herself in that wrong place, trying to piece together what happened. She was sent to Temple, but since Damon was listed as a John Doe, nobody knew what to tell her.

The next morning, she returned to identify her dead son. Now, all she can do is reflect and wonder what's become of her city.

"I just think something has to be done about these kids with these pistols," Marcia said. "They just don't care who they hit. People are minding their own business and then, bam, you're gone just like that. ... I still don't have the answers that I need to have. There are things that just don't make sense to me."

Me either, Marcia. But I do know this: Each time I see a daily Barbaro update, I'll think about Damon. About how senseless it is that he died the way he died. And, most importantly, about how his life had value.