Why is there even a question about charges in this case?

The 12-year-old boy had finished his homework and was playing a video game when he heard his mother cry out. Rushing to her aid, he found her on the kitchen floor, straddled by a fellow resident of their Prince George's County boarding house, the man's hands wrapped tightly around her neck, the boy said yesterday.

"I kept saying, 'Stop! Stop! Stop!' " the boy said, describing the events of Monday night. "But he just ignored me. He didn't stop. He just kept hurting her."

The boy said he grabbed a knife and swung, slashing 64-year-old Salomon Noubissie across the neck and opening an artery. Noubissie was fatally wounded.
The mother, Cheryl Stamp, said she did not immediately understand what had happened. "What did you do?" she said she asked her son.

"He didn't say anything," she said. "But I knew when I looked in his eyes. I said, 'Oh, Lord.' "

The shocking thing is that the cops are still trying to decide whether or not to file charges against this young hero. What is a person to do in that situation, especially when that person is a 12-year-old? Grab the nearest available weapon and use it to defend the victim of the attack, thatÂ’s what!

Sadly, though, this story strikes way too close to home for me.

My first year of teaching here in Houston, I gave a writing assignment to my English students on the topic “A Moment That Changed My Life”. I was stunned the next day when a polite young man turned in a paper entitled “The Night I Killed A Man”, all about his having stabbed and killed a man who had broken into his house and was beating up his father, who had gone downstairs to check on a noise.

That afternoon I went to my principal to show her the paper and express my rather serious concern over what I had read. Was the boy mentally disturbed and in need of psychological help? Was the story true, and did I need to inform the police? It was then I was told that this student had, in fact done exactly what was described in the paper a few months before – and that he was attending our school because of threats against his life by some of the dead robber’s associates.

I got to know this student quite well during that year. He was haunted by what he had done, even though he knew that using that butcher knife to protect his father was exactly the right thing to do. I’ve lost tack of him over the years, but I still remember him expressing his amazement with how fragile life was and how he was bothered by the fact that there was nothing he could ever do to undo the taking of a life, no matter how justified it was. It serves as one more reminder that we teachers learn from our students every bit as much as they learn from us – and sometimes even more.

Posted by: Greg at 12:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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