Article September 7, 1992 ISSUE

They belong to God, not to a gang

We each have a part in healing gang violence. It's time to get started.

Julio C. Rivas T.

Hearing a loud scream, I turned to my left to see a fellow teenager running toward me with a long knife. Noticing that his eyes were looking past me, I turned and saw another teenager, who was aiming his shotgun at him. I yelled to him not to shoot. But the shotgun fired, and the teenager with the knife fell backward, fatally wounded.

Minutes prior to this incident, the sharp end of one of those long knives had been pressed against my neck. I had twice escaped death that afternoon almost twenty years ago. I did not grow up in a ghetto, and I did not belong to a gang, but the public school I went to had its share of gang violence.

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