Posted on 05/31/2005 7:48:34 PM PDT by Asphalt
NEW YORK -- It began as child's play: a tug of war between two young girls over a rubber ball at a Memorial Day gathering in Brooklyn. But when one of the girls reached for a steak knife, the holiday turned to tragedy. The 9-year-old _ a skinny fourth-grader identified by the city only as Shanice K. to protect her identity _ was in custody on Tuesday, accused of stabbing her playmate to death. A Family Court judge ordered her detained until a hearing on Thursday, when she's expected to be charged with manslaughter. At a brief hearing, Shanice at first gazed around impassively. But her eyes welled up with tears as her mother hugged her and began weeping uncontrollably, saying, "Oh, my baby." The mother left the courthouse without speaking to reporters. Defense attorney Nicole Barnum declined to discuss the specifics of the case, calling it. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
PSPL?
No kidding. This is horrible.
Kids don't realise that there is such a thing as life and death.
I worked in a NYC school and had to deal with a 10 year old girl using a broom handle to break open a window so she could attack another classmate on the other side.
We have some violent little tots here. Doesn't surprise me at all.
yeah, still horrible
East New York is a challenging place to live.
Well, when you have 7, 8, 9 years old whose heros are 50 cent and Jay Z...
It really is hard to believe how violent these kids are... I was scared out of my mind.
I can only imagine. For every beautiful building and pretty stretch of ocean there are thousands of violent kids from messed up homes.
I was in the Bronx.
My dad sometimes works as a substitute teacher, and he comes home amazed at how some of the kids are. And this is in Tulsa, OK, the so called buckle of the bible belt.
As far as I am concerned; it is the parents who should be charged with manslaughter.
I could live there if I was single and have no kids. Otherwise, it's not a nice place to raise children. I've been there. It's lifeless and mostly closed down buildings.
No they don't. I feel so sorry for her and her family.
My heart goes out to the dead childs family as well.
Children are children.
Depending. There are godly, christian parents with aweful kids, and vice-verca
One more reason to homeschool/private school/online school
Believe it or not, I read about a single mom who took her child out of one of the schools in Brooklyn and homeschooled her.
What do you do with kids like this? While she obviously has serious issues, it's been established time and time again that kids don't really "get" death until their early teen years. Yeah, they can recite the fact back, but they don't comprehend that dead is forever at nine years old unless they've personally lost a close loved one.
I hate to sound like I'm making excuses, but I really don't think this girl understood the gravity of what she was doing. Charging her with murder and putting her in prison isn't the answer. She needs to be taken from her home and placed in an environment where she can receive intense counseling for the next few years. Not prison, counseling.
I think kids must have been always violent, but there is some kind of difference now. Some kind of inhumanity about them, seriously.
I think video games, the internet, and then the music -- put that on top of their family situation... I don't know. It was like they had no attention span and ZERO respect for authority (unless you can use fear, which in the schools, you are not always able to do).
It was a truly frightening experience.
9 years old.... It's not an issue of not understanding death at that age. She probably first wanted to scare the other girl and then lost control.
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