Walking To School

A 13-year-old Old Mill Middle School-North pupil told police that a stranger grabbed her, carried her into the woods and tried to sexually assault her yesterday morning, prompting school officials to issue a warning to parents of other young walkers. The incident shook parents and children in the neighborhood, where another Old Mill teen-ager, Lisa Kathleen Haenel, was stabbed to death a decade ago during her morning walk to school. That crime is unsolved. "These things are few and far between, but it only takes one time to end up like little Lisa," said parent Debbie Long, adding that she has never let either of her daughters walk to or from the campus of Old Mill middle and high schools in Millersville.

A second grader at Sandy Plains Elementary School in Dundalk was seriously injured on his morning walk to school Monday when he was struck by a car, according to Baltimore County officials. Emergency personnel responded to the scene near the school, located in the 8300 block of Kavanagh Road, about 8:30 a.m. and found the injured boy, who is 8 years old, according to Lt. Jay Ringgold, the spokesman. The boy was transported to the pediatric trauma center at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Ringgold said.

Sharon Kirin was trying to have her son's bus stop moved closer to their Eldersburg home when she found out that her 5-year-old would not be allowed on the bus at all for much longer. With the roads of their new housing development nearly complete and their quiet cul-de-sac just eight-tenths of a mile from Freedom Elementary School, Kirin's son and 31 other neighborhood children were soon to be designated by the school system as walkers. "That really surprised me because I had not realized that anybody walked to Freedom.

On Wednesday, Baltimore schoolchildren will join students from around the world by participating in International Walk to School Day. Now in its 15th year, this global initiative aims not only to help keep students healthy but also to improve air quality (fewer motor vehicles, less pollution) and decrease traffic congestion (nationally, as much as 20 percent to 30 percent of morning traffic is generated by parents driving their children to school). To many readers, walking to school may not seem like news.

The image is rivetting and clear: police officers with guns cocked walking through the streets shouting angrily at an unruly crowd. It could be Bosnia, Soweto or Belfast, where civil wars have shredded the fabric of civilization.But this chilling scene hits closer to home.It occurred last weekend in West Baltimore at the public housing project known as George B. Murphy Homes during bloody September on the streets of Baltimore.In a three-day span, the local high-rise projects once again played host to violent crime.

Chicago. -- I was 7 years old the first time I sneaked out of the house in the dark. It was winter and my parents had been fighting all night. They were short on money and long on relatives who kept ''temporarily'' moving into our house because they had nowhere else to go.My brother and I were used to giving up our bedroom. We slept on the couch, something we actually liked because it put us that much closer to the light of our lives, our television.At night when everyone was asleep, we lay on our pillows watching it with the sound off. We watched Steve Allen's mouth moving.

If parents would make sure their school-age children walk, play and generally exercise every day, far fewer kids would be hurt when they embark on strenuous organized sports.Dr. Lyle J. Micheli, director of sports medicine at Children's Hospital in Boston, says more kids are suffering from badly torn knee ligaments, for example. And what causes these injuries, he says, seem quite minor: perhaps just a wrong turn in a basketball game."There's nothing wrong with organized sports, but [kids]

A Columbia man charged with threatening Wilde Lake High School students with a handgun in September was hospitalized yesterday with medical problems, leading attorneys to postpone a preliminary hearing. Stephen P. Bourexis, attorney for Edward Brown Jr., said in Howard County District Court that his client could not attend the hearing because he was in Howard County General Hospital because of fainting spells and complications from diabetes. Kim Oldham, a county prosecutor, told District Judge Sue-Ellen Hantman that she planned to present Brown's case to a grand jury next week for a possible indictment.

Saying speeding cars would endanger children walking to school, hundreds of parents demanded bus transportation for students who live less than a mile from an elementary school to open in Fountain Green this fall.But some members of the school board, which has delayed a decision on the request until at least next month, call bus transportation unnecessary for children who would walk less than a mile through a residential neighborhood with sidewalks.School officials also said that if they provided buses for children who live near Fountain Green Elementary, they would have to do the same for all county children, which would add $2.3 million to the annual $11.5 million transportation tab. A 30-year-old policy stipulates that elementary students who live less than a mile from school should walk, but the school system has made a few exceptions.

Plans for discontinuing a school bus route in Savage have parents worried about their children's safety while walking to school.The cancellation of the route will mean that 60 Bollman Bridge Elementary School children and 15 Patuxent Valley Middle School children will have to walk to school, said Jayne Shaffer, chairman of the Bollman Bridge PTA's safety committee.Mrs. Shaffer and other parents say they want flashing lights installed in front of the school to warn cars to slow down, and a four-way stop at the intersection of Savage-Guilford and Vollmerhausen roads.

A 13-year-old boy was struck by an SUV while walking to his school bus in Crofton Thursday morning, according to Anne Arundel County fire officials. Fire crews responded to John Hopkins Road and Lowell Court after a 7:37 a.m. 911 call, said Lt. Cliff Kooser of the Anne Arundel County Fire Department. The boy was taken to the pediatric intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital with serious injuries that did not appear to be life-threatening, Kooser said. No one else was injured, he said.

At Stoneleigh Elementary School in Baltimore County, so many of the 624 students walk to school these days that by the end of one year, the PTA calculated, its kids had trekked a combined 14,000 miles - the equivalent of a trip halfway around the world. But at Mills-Parole School in Annapolis, where sidewalks were recently installed to encourage walking, most students still arrive on wheels. Trying to make kids fitter and more independent while saving the environment, advocates and some parents are promoting a return to the days when walking to school was the norm.

Assistant Principal David Lewis has worked at William Paca Elementary School for seven years. Not one of those years has passed without a student being hit by a car. Lewis joined police officers, city officials and 250 elementary school students yesterday to help promote pedestrian safety as part of Baltimore's 10th annual Walk to School Day. The event marked International Walk to School Month, a global program from the National Center for Safe Routes...

ST. LOUIS -- Under a dreary sky, on a city block pocked by abandonment, a door opens and a girl of 15 steps out. With a black-and-blue book bag slung across her back, she starts walking to school. Her name is Janay Truitt, and she lives on the crime-rich and money-poor north side of St. Louis. She shares an apartment above a dry-cleaning store with two grandparents, two sisters, a brother and her mother, who leaves at 4:30 in the morning to drive a school bus. Her father lives elsewhere.

It's our bedtime ritual. My 5-year-old daughter and I read the latest Little House chapter and talk about the coming day. Tonight's topic: kindergarten. "What's going to happen tomorrow?" Catie asks. I tell her how her father will take her to school for the first time, how she'll go to class, how she'll eat pizza in the cafeteria. As I speak, she inches farther and farther under her blanket, until I ask, "Cate, what are you doing?" Her eyes peek out and twinkle. "I'm going on an adventure!"

COLUMBIA - The crunch of leaves beneath their feet was muffled by the children's voices as they paraded to school, carrying signs to let drivers know that it was International Walk to School Day at Swansfield Elementary and around the world. "Walk don't pollute," read one of the handmade signs on display during the event Wednesday. "Be cool, walk to school," said another. 50 schools take part Swansfield was one of 50 schools in Maryland that took part in the ninth annual event, and the school's 500 pupils were among an estimated 3 million people who walked to their schools in more than 35 countries on six continents Shannon Toole and his children, fifth-grader Gideon and third-grader Mary Kate, were joined by others in their neighborhood for the trek to Swansfield.

Parents whose children are expected to walk to the new Linton Springs Elementary School in the fall say the streets are unsafe and they want students to ride buses.Residents of the Linton Springs Civic Association plan to present a petition with more than 230 signatures to the Carroll County Board of Education today in an effort to have bus service in the Eldersburg neighborhood."Our stance is that the streets are just not safe enough for elementary school students to be walking on," said Ted Cusick, president of the Linton Springs Civic Association.

Some parents in a Severna Park community, worried that their children might be hit by a car as they walk to school along busy Jones Station Road, are demanding that the school officials build a sidewalk or provide a bus."The only thing that separates the children from the road is a single white line on the pavement," said Luanne Kerrigan, whose first-grader attends Jones-Oakhill Elementary School."There is no curb, no nothing, nothing to stop a car from hitting a child."Starting next month, Kerrigan's son and five other children will have to walk to Jones Elementary School on Hoyle Lane from their homes on Snellings Court.

A Columbia man charged with threatening Wilde Lake High School students with a handgun in September was hospitalized yesterday with medical problems, leading attorneys to postpone a preliminary hearing. Stephen P. Bourexis, attorney for Edward Brown Jr., said in Howard County District Court that his client could not attend the hearing because he was in Howard County General Hospital because of fainting spells and complications from diabetes. Kim Oldham, a county prosecutor, told District Judge Sue-Ellen Hantman that she planned to present Brown's case to a grand jury next week for a possible indictment.

Sharon Kirin was trying to have her son's bus stop moved closer to their Eldersburg home when she found out that her 5-year-old would not be allowed on the bus at all for much longer. With the roads of their new housing development nearly complete and their quiet cul-de-sac just eight-tenths of a mile from Freedom Elementary School, Kirin's son and 31 other neighborhood children were soon to be designated by the school system as walkers. "That really surprised me because I had not realized that anybody walked to Freedom.