Sick. Evil. Absurd. Those are the only ways to describe the gleeful response teenage girls made to the shooting of fellow customer Marvin Edmonds in a Baltimore City Chinese carryout restaurant in August.
Their laughter, caught on security tape, is not the only horrifying part of the spectacle. The restaurant continued to serve patrons as Edmonds lay bleeding on the floor. Edmonds told The Examiner, “They stepped around me to get their orders. … No one asked me, ‘Was I all right? Do you need me to make a phone call? Do you want me to help you off the floor?'”
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What’s scary is that this is not an isolated event.
Remember Jolita Berry, the art teacher at Reginald F. Lewis High School who was attacked by a student in April while others cheered the student on and one filmed it on a cell phone?
Or what about Frank Principato, the teacher attacked by two William C. March Middle School students in March? They shattered his cheekbone and broke his nose and his eye socket.
And Sarah Kreager, who was brutally beaten on a bus with her boyfriend, Troy Ennis, a year ago by 30 students from Robert Poole Middle School?
We’d like to be morally outraged. But violent, criminal behavior appears to be the norm for many Baltimore City teenagers.
Mayor Sheila Dixon suggested the girls who laughed in the carry out were “mentally disturbed.” But the behavior that so appalls her is the same that the city’s public schools tolerate by not notifying police when the attacks happen, as we have reported numerous times. Schools cannot replace parents, but they can send a clear message that brutal and callous behavior will be punished, always. If this latest event — a top hit on YouTube — does not jolt public officials into reality, we do not know what will.
For the sake of our teachers, rule-abiding students, residents and the police department, these teenagers must be stopped before they leave more Marvin Edmonds to die and attack teachers who dedicate their lives to giving them the knowledge to rise above their circumstances.
