Tomorrow, Judge David W. Young will tell five Robert Poole Middle School students what their punishment will be for the Dec. 4 beating of Sarah Kreager that left her with a black eye and a broken eye socket. Young found on March 18 that the five were "responsible" for attacking Kreager. (Nasty but piercingly accurate words like "guilty" are not used in juvenile court.)
One of the boys in the Kreager case, in his statement to police, was convinced that his schoolmates wouldn't give him up, wouldn't "put him out there like that," that they wouldn't snitch on him. Anna Sowers, in her campaign to stamp out this kind of thinking in Baltimore, challenged local black leaders to come forth and publicly condemn the "stop snitching" culture.
In late May of 2007, there was one incident in West Baltimore that showed there are indeed people in Baltimore who don't buy into the "stop snitching" credo. There are people who will call police when a crime occurs, who know inappropriate conduct when they see it, who will condemn it and who are willing to be witnesses.
And some of them are children.
I'm not revealing the names of the three boys who saw Rather get shot because they are witnesses to a homicide who might have to testify at Haskins' trial. So I'll just refer to these juveniles as Boy A, Boy B and Boy C.
The trio had been dismissed from school about 2:40 p.m. on May 29. They had just come from the store when they witnessed the incident. They stayed until police arrived. About 10 hours later, they were at the Southwestern District giving statements to police. The boys and their parents cooperated fully.
It was Boy A, only 10 at the time, who talked to homicide Detective Joon Kim.
"Do you remember anything else about the shooting that you want to let me know?" Kim asked Boy A after the youth gave all the major details.
"Yeah," Boy A answered, "I kept telling him to pray to Jehovah."
This is a story about the other Baltimore journalists don't often report about: a witness who tells a dying homicide victim to pray to God for deliverance. Witnesses who cooperate immediately with police, which allows a suspect to be nabbed quickly. Witnesses who don't scurry for cover when a crime occurs, but who report it.
I think I'll offer some thanks to Jehovah that kids like Boy A and his schoolmates live in this city.
greg.kane@baltsun.com
