Do You Feel Safe in Mike Coleman’s Columbus?
The Dispatch reports of “hood-banging” and rioting:
Her arms folded over her chest in defiance, 14-year-old Joaysa Miller stood firm in the middle of St. Clair Avenue, bringing the Columbus school bus to a halt yesterday afternoon, police said.
A rowdy group of youths on the North Side street — police said as many as 20 teens were there — taunted the passengers and threw rocks at the bus, which was carrying students from Independence High School.
It was the second day in a row that a bus had been attacked at the intersection of St. Clair and Shoemaker avenues.
During yesterday’s attack, the driver, whose name the district didn’t release, called for help on her cell phone, saying she had to stop because she couldn’t just “run the girl over,” witnesses said.
Meanwhile, one of her passengers opened the rear emergency exit and a fight started with the youths in the street. At least two more boys followed him out the back door as the brawl escalated.
“It was crazy. They were shouting ‘East Side!’ and ‘North Side!’ — They were ”hood-banging,’ ” said Georgette Woods, 15, a sophomore at Whetstone High School who was on another bus that was brought to a halt by the commotion. “It’s the ‘hoods. Columbus is made up of so many ‘hoods. … They just wanted to fight.”
According to 610 WTVN’s Joe Riley, the Columbus schools’ minister of information, Jeff Warner, is refusing to comment because he doesn’t consider these children attacking two school buses is really a riot.
Could Democrats and Republicans at least agree that it is IMPOSSIBLE for a student to get a quality education when his or her biggest fear is that they could have their head smashed in with a rock on their way home?
