I am so glad that someone has decided to humanize Scotty Scott rather than let him slip away as another victim of gun violence in Harlem. While I still don’t have a true sense of who he is, I do know that he was a typical 13 year old, loved by his family. Sometimes we get away from that when we have so many incidents of violence happening in succession, as we have witnessed over the course of this summer.
Scotty was someone’s child. Someone’s student. Someone’s friend. He was a kid doing the things that kids do. I remember being 13 years old and disobeying my mother’s words on a Friday night as well. The difference is that I didn’t have to pay for my disobedience with my life.
When Scotty left his house that afternoon, I’m sure he had no intention of winding up in the morgue by the end of the night. Every time one of these stories appears in the news, I hope that we find it in our hearts to sympathize with the families and have compassion for the lost family member. I hope that we can work together towards decreasing the preponderance of guns in Harlem, rather than pointing fingers and playing the blame game. It is so much easier to sit in your comfortable home and say, ‘see there,’ rather than actually doing something about the situation. Let’s challenge ourselves to do something to stop the violence so that other children don’t have to lose their lives on the streets of Harlem.
Before heading out to buy shoes early Friday evening, Scotty Scott hung on his bedroom wall a clock he made in art class.
Scotty Scott, 13 year-old murdered
The 13-year-old had intended the clock to be a memorial to two neighborhood teenagers shot to death two years before. He had inscribed their nicknames on the white face along with three letters.
“RIP.”
As measured by the clock, Scotty was himself shot to death less than three hours after he left his Harlemhome to buy school shoes and hang out with friends. He had spoken to his 17-year-old sister around 7 p.m. and she had relayed a message from their mother.
“I told him my mother said come straight home after he got his shoes,” the sister, Twanea Cummings, recalled. “He said, ‘All right.’”
Not 25 more sweeps of the minute hand later, the family got a call telling them that Scotty had been shot to death. The mother reacted as any mother might upon losing her youngest child.
Read the rest:The New York Daily News
Kris
September 9, 2008
It seems like we get one of these events every 6 weeks. The local politicians scream outrage, the parents cry, and the news media covers the story for a few days. In a week we forget, and 5 weeks later the same thing happens again.
Of course the problem is very complex, but we need a multi prong strategy. We need more focus on education, increased police protection, and we need parents to get more involved before strategy strikes. If the police arrest one of our teenagers, the parents begin screaming and yelling that the cops are no good; but once something like this happens we say they aren’t doing enough.
We need to be parents to our kids, and we need to work with the police to keep our neighborhoods safe. We need to complain to 311, and we need to call the police to report suspicious activity. If we continue to accept the same behavior, we’ll keep getting the same results.
mzj
September 8, 2008
I agree with the comment you have made here. I’ve always said that parents need to be more aware of what’s happening with the youth today. If they would only take the time to check teir childrens friends and activities a bit more. My condolences go out to the family and my prayers.
Basically it was so ironic that this young man had designed a clock to memoralize othe lost lives. Yet sad to say the clock also has another name that can be added to it. The parents truly need to go back to the old school ways of checking their kids belongings.
Look under the beds and in the closets and other nooks and crannies for guns and weapons. Most of all talk to your children and keep them in prayer. I understand that we can’t be around our children 24/7. But they must know that someone is watching over them a lot more than they think and it starts at HOME. Because it’s too late when a parent gets a call from the police to come to the morgue to identify they body of a slain loved one.
James
September 7, 2008
Thanks for this story D. Bell.