When a kid is murdered, L.A. goes looking for culprits:
While Westside detectives are searching for the kid who actually shot 17-year-old Venice High student Agustin Contreras to death Monday, everyone else in the realms of L.A. power and influence has been searching for the Real Killers - the systemic breakdown or social tension that put the shooter's finger on the trigger.
But Agustin's death doesn't fit into the neat little blame box that LAUSD and the less-introspective news media were hoping for:
It was a scuffle over a knicknack that turned bad. The Times reports that Agustin stepped in to stop a black gang member from mugging his younger brother for a necklace, and took a bullet in the chest.
But that didn't stop the school from defaming itself in a way:
The Contreras family also said that a school letter explaining the shooting to parents maligned their son's character. The letter described the incident as "gang related," but failed to distinguish between Agustin, a football player with no gang affiliation, and his killer, Carrillo said.
Venice High is now under heavy cop patrols, the halls are likely abuzz with rumors and maybe racist talk and for the rest of the year, people will probably forget how far the school has grown since its heyday of gang violence more than a decade ago. They'll forget about its students' excellence in the academic decathlon victories, the Learning Garden, the Bilingual Business and Finance Academy and all the accomplishments of the school's students and administration.
It's easier to shove a boy's senseless death, and the entire school community back into a neatly labeled pigeonhole and go on fussing uselessly about things over which we seem to have only the most inept control - racism, gun violence, gangs.
But let's not. Let's keep addressing those problems on their own terms.
And mourn separately the death of a kid who fell victim to life, greed and chance because he went to protect his brother.
The only scapegoat here is the one hiding from the cops.
Posted by: Mack_Reed on Thursday, June 08, 2006 - 09:06 AM
