Please tell me it hasn't come to this
Students grieve, parents worry, police explore possible motives in classroom shooting
Investigators are cautious about proclaiming a motive in a shooting Tuesday at an Oxnard, California junior high school. The victim, Lawrence King, age 15, has died.
The Associated Press reports that King had been under the care of the county's foster care system, and lived at a center for abused and neglected children. Meanwhile, he remains on a ventilator while his family decides whether or not to authorize organ donation.
Whatever the motive turns out to be, the underlying question remains as to what the hell has happened. I went to school in a fairly safe place. It was a Jesuit school. We didn't pack heat. In fact, school security worried less about the established gangs and more about wanna-be gangstas who thought they had something to prove. And since none of these were among the student-body, it was not an everyday concern.
Nonetheless, I went to school in Tacoma, a city wracked over the years by gang violence. We were accustomed to hearing about it in the streets, and occasionally in the form of beatings and stabbings in school hallways. It is hard to envision the scene when a fourteen year-old walks into a classroom and puts two into a fellow student as two dozen classmates watch in horror. How, exactly, does this come about? What is at stake?
The face of grief: Jocelyn Salinas, 13, weeps for a friend.
(Image: Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times)
Notes:
Saillant, Catherine and Steve Chawkins. "Student shot in Oxnard". Los Angeles Times. February 13, 2008. See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oxnard13feb13,1,7688402.story
Associated Press. "Official: Shooting Victim Brain Dead". SFGate.com. February 14, 2008. See http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/02/13/state/n173105S00.DTL
See Also:
LATimes.com. "Oxnard school shooting". See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oxnard13feb13-pg,1,440424.photogallery
Students grieve, parents worry, police explore possible motives in classroom shooting
Investigators are cautious about proclaiming a motive in a shooting Tuesday at an Oxnard, California junior high school. The victim, Lawrence King, age 15, has died.
A student at an Oxnard junior high school shot another classmate Tuesday in front of two dozen other students who were settling into their first-period English class, police said ....
.... The shooting was not gang-related, said Keith, who added that the school had not been a particular trouble spot before.
"It looked like it was personal between the two of them," he said, declining to elaborate.
Some students said the victim, whose name was not disclosed, sometimes wore makeup and feminine jewelry and had declared himself gay. They said he was frequently taunted by other boys and had been involved in an argument with the alleged shooter, an eighth-grader who also was not named, and others Monday.
During the lunchtime argument, one of the boys shouted at Tuesday's victim, "You better watch your back," said one student who witnessed the encounter.
Police said they had not determined a motive for the crime.
Keith said investigators had also heard that the victim was gay but did not know whether that was true or whether it figured in the attack. They were sorting through several other possibilities as well, he said:
"Which are true and which are rumor, we're trying to figure out."
(Saillant, and Chawkins)
The Associated Press reports that King had been under the care of the county's foster care system, and lived at a center for abused and neglected children. Meanwhile, he remains on a ventilator while his family decides whether or not to authorize organ donation.
Whatever the motive turns out to be, the underlying question remains as to what the hell has happened. I went to school in a fairly safe place. It was a Jesuit school. We didn't pack heat. In fact, school security worried less about the established gangs and more about wanna-be gangstas who thought they had something to prove. And since none of these were among the student-body, it was not an everyday concern.
Nonetheless, I went to school in Tacoma, a city wracked over the years by gang violence. We were accustomed to hearing about it in the streets, and occasionally in the form of beatings and stabbings in school hallways. It is hard to envision the scene when a fourteen year-old walks into a classroom and puts two into a fellow student as two dozen classmates watch in horror. How, exactly, does this come about? What is at stake?
The face of grief: Jocelyn Salinas, 13, weeps for a friend.
(Image: Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times)
This world has gone and drug us along and
Nothing's the same, and it will never be again.
It's never gonna be the same.
And all these lives that make no sense,
All along we cry in our defense.
All of us go down slow,
Then we rise again.
But just like the tide on the sea,
We lower and rise again ....
(Floater, "Endless II")
____________________Nothing's the same, and it will never be again.
It's never gonna be the same.
And all these lives that make no sense,
All along we cry in our defense.
All of us go down slow,
Then we rise again.
But just like the tide on the sea,
We lower and rise again ....
(Floater, "Endless II")
Notes:
Saillant, Catherine and Steve Chawkins. "Student shot in Oxnard". Los Angeles Times. February 13, 2008. See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oxnard13feb13,1,7688402.story
Associated Press. "Official: Shooting Victim Brain Dead". SFGate.com. February 14, 2008. See http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/02/13/state/n173105S00.DTL
See Also:
LATimes.com. "Oxnard school shooting". See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oxnard13feb13-pg,1,440424.photogallery