Hello Readers,
It has been some time since my last post. Life gets crazy and before I know it, I realize that I have went too long without posting.
To catch you up on my adventures...
A few weeks ago, I decided to go to a gallery opening event in order to view some work of a friend. I was way beyond excited to go see her stuff hanging in a gallery. It was the evening time when I set about getting to her gallery, by myself. Mind you, I have always been pretty fearless and think nothing of going places by myself.
The area which the gallery is located is in an "okay" part of the STL and the streets are lined with lights, so I figured there would be no issues. When I drove past the gallery, I realized that there wasn't any parking off-street, so I was forced to park a few streets away and hoof it from there.
Again, I figure no problem. That was right up until some kid came playfully jogging up to me trying to chat with me. He was an urban youth, talking slang to me and I politely smiled and told him I couldn't talk that I had some place to be. He trotted away for a bit and then came back and grabbed me in my arm.
"Give me all you got!!!" he screamed at me. At first, I really thought it was a joke. This was a KID. No more than 14, maybe. I turned ready to laugh a little bit, thinking he was playing around, after all at one point, I was involved in teaching and know kids in this age group like to play and joke around.
When I turned he screamed the words again at me and pointed a gun right in my face. It was a pistol of some kind and clearly, this kid wasn't joking around. He had an angry look on his face that also read of being terrified all at the same time for what he was doing.
I didn't have a purse on me or anything of value, so I said back "I don't have anything. Look, I've got nothing!" and I turned out my pockets to show him. He screamed at me again to give him what I had, to which I replied again, that I had nothing on me.
It was then he got angry and hit me in the face. Stunned, I dropped to the ground, thinking that this was to be the last few minutes of my life. All I could think is that this kid was going to shoot and kill me or rape me first and then kill me. Instead, he cursed at me and kicked me in my side a few times (thank god it was a cold night and I was wearing layers).
The next thing I knew, a lady emerged from a nearby house and screamed at him, frightening him and he ran off. She quickly came over to me on the sidewalk and asked if I was okay. Crying, I told her yes. It was at that point that she asked "What the hell some white girl like me was doing walking around by myself in her neighborhood."
I really couldn't answer. I didn't know it was a somewhat bad area. I had drove through this neighborhood during the day, and it always seemed fine.
With that, she informed me that she had called the police and within a few minutes, an officer came and took down all the information, but not before he ridiculed me too. "What the hell are you doing, walking around by yourself in this neighborhood? White girls like you are raped and left for dead for less than that. Some of the gangs around here require raping a girl just to get in. You are damn lucky."
I could do little more than hang my head in shame and fill out a report. He took all the details and told me that the description I gave, could fit almost any young male in that neighborhood.
Some time has past since this whole ordeal, and I did check in with the officer to learn that he had no solid leads on the kid. It wasn't until today that I got the phone call from the officer telling me that he thought he had located the kid responsible. As it would turn out, he had been asking some of the other local kids in the neighborhood about the incident to see if they knew anything. One young man came forward and shared with him a picture on his cell phone, of me, beaten, on the street.
While I do not recall there having been other teens around, I did not dismiss it entirely. The officer questioned the young man who proceeded to tell him if he gave the name of the young man responsible, he did not want it to be known. Bottom line, there was evidence and a name and the kid who beat me was questioned at his Aunt's house and will be doing some hard community service.
The reason for this is I decided NOT to press charges against him formally. All I wanted was for him to learn his lesson. I do know though that since he was in the possession of a gun, he will probably have to do more than just community service - he will also serve time in a juvenile detention center.
Not my problem, but bottom line he will have to be held accountable for his actions. I did ask the officer to meet him. Just once. My reason? So I am not some nameless victim by his hands that he laughs about with his friend. that I become a real person with a real name and life that he is forced to hear about.
I meet with him in two weeks...
Best,
A
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