Shoot-out at the High School
There was a shoot-out — and I mean like a full gansta shoot-out — up the street at 6:30 AM. Twenty or thirty or more shots fired. It happened in the parking lot of the A.M.E. church. The smell of cordite lingered for half an hour. Sirens, sergeants and paddy-wagons for an hour. Ghetto birds, police helicopters, off and on for two hours. Now, as I look down the street, it’s just detectives and such.
One of the social studies teachers, Tyrone, drove right past the shooting. It was a little more stimulation that he had really needed first thing in the morning. He prefers coffee. I drove by shortly after it all happened, when all the yellow tape was going up. I have no idea who was killed, who was wounded.
But I can guess. The 56 Span haunts this neighborhood. They are a branch of the Crips. I’ve been told that they are being replaced by the Bloods. But I can only guess at these developments. In this school, students come here to be away from all that. We’re a safe school on the edge of a violent neighborhood.
I just wish folks appreciated what my kids walk through in order to get their education. I had to go to Vietnam in order to see that level of violence.
_____