Over the weekend, I heard a story on the local TV news about a shooting at an after-hours club on the east side of the city. During an argument, someone pulled out an AK-47. The hair on the back of neck stood up, and an involuntary shiver went down my spine when the announcer said a 21-year old young woman had been fatally wounded. I thought to myself, "she could be one of my students."
The next day, I received an email confirming that, indeed, a former student of mine had been shot and died subsequently at a local hospital. I wish I could say that I was shocked and surprised by this, but I was not. She was a smart girl who made really stupid decisions.
She graduated in 2002, I believe, but at any other school, she would have dropped out or been kicked out first. Our little school embraced her quirky sense of humor, her wild "coming apart at the seams" appearance; and we all recognized that underneath the "street-wise" veneer lay a certain innate and gentle intelligence. When she came to class, she could perform like any top student--she was engaged; nothing was too difficult for her, and she asked the right questions. At other times, she slept in the back, came late or didn't come to class at all.
She leaves a 10-month old son--I don't know about the father--but I can guess. What becomes of a baby whose mother is shot and killed in this way? I don't need much imagination, knowing what I know of his mother's life.
Someday in the future, during an after-hours party fueled by drugs and booze and attended by thugs with street names like "D-Man" and "Double C,"an AK-47 will appear. Here we go again.
1 comment:
This must have been very painful for you. When it gets personalized like that it's no longer "somebody else's problem."
It reminds me of my son's sophomore year in high school when we attended the funeral of George, a boy down the street who was shot and killed in a robbery. The sound of his mother wailing in agony will be in my ears for the rest of my life. My anger at her for letting a sophomore in high school be out at three in the morning unsupervised made me feel confused.
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