Does anyone care about the violence in our community?

Some say I am prone to bouts of overreaction - surely I am hypersensitive to the many incidents of random violence occurring these days; all of these accusations are somewhat valid – but I AM outraged by the recent events of the weekend.

A 17-year old girl, who by all accounts was one of the “good” ones gets mowed down by a car and the community, as a whole, says “Oh, that’s tragic” and moves on with their busy little lives. The police, even after all the first-hand witnesses claiming it was not simply a traffic accident, are probably going to only charge the driver with reckless driving, instead of a more serious charge.

There are credible witnesses who indicated that driver of the car was aiming for rival gang members and lost control of the car and hit Sarah, who was waiting with her younger sister for their grandmother to pick them up after school. Today there are some reports that both the driver and the victim were fleeing the same fight in the Marriot parking lot when the terrible accident occurred.

Obviously, there will be many different accounts of this incident of Friday, but there is two constants in all renditions. There was a fight in the Marriott parking lot. A young woman was seriously hurt when hit by a car.

Whether this fight was school related or not is not germane to the discussion, what is important is that there is an obvious lack of respect in many of our young people today. Does the young driver show any remorse to possibly ruining the life of a very promising young woman? Do the young people engaged in this fights have any respect for each other?

When will ALL the grown-ups in this community finally stand up and start doing something about the seemingly random violence in our community. Our community has more than one police department and numerous high schools which blurs the lines of responsibilities. These organizations need to work TOGETHER and SHARE information; jurisdictional lines and different organizational policies are only some of the barriers our community faces, but these are the barriers that can be removed.

My thoughts and prayers are with Sarah and her family at this time, but I feel like this isn’t enough. I feel powerless. How many more innocent young people like Sarah have to be hurt before this community reacts?