Kids hear all kinds of weird stuff at a young age. Shoot I remember 2nd grade boys trying to be gross singing a little ditty "Suffocation" to the tune of "Alouette." "Pull a bag over your head, go to bed and wake up dead"... in that vein. (There were others about shooting the teacher, etc. But funny, nobody actually did it.)
With helicopters buzzing overhead, hundreds of people - many with children in their arms - converged on the neighborhood. Yellow crime-scene tape kept them, and reporters, from getting too close to where the bodies were found.
Some onlookers wept. Others simply watched, stunned, heads shaking in disbelief.
On River Avenue, several women held onto a wrought-iron fence, sobbing uncontrollably as they peered into the backyard of Anibal Cruz, 11, who went missing Wednesday afternoon with his friends Daniel Agosto, 6, and Jesstin Pagan, 5.
"I feel guilty because I couldn't do anything else to make this not to turn out this way," said Magdalena Medina of Sicklerville.
Medina said as soon she heard on the news about the three missing boys, she jumped in her car and drove to Cramer Hill to join the search.
"I felt that my responsibility was to be here helping all the others go through those abandoned houses, Dumpsters, bushes and knock door by door," said Medina.
"It's shocking," said Liz Alvarado, a Cramer Hill resident who helped the effort by handing out fliers along River Avenue.
snip
Around the corner, on Beideman Avenue, Derrick Lofton said he watched as David Agosto opened the trunk of a Toyota Camry, only to see the bodies of his son and his son's playmates.
"My spine sort of collapsed when I saw it," said Lofton, 38.
A Pennsauken native whose family lives in Camden, Lofton said he saw authorities check the car on Thursday and Friday morning.
"They just didn't check the trunk," he said.
Lofton's 4-year-old daughter Deiana was with him at the time.
"I have to stay closer to my daughter," he said. "I wish I didn't see it."
...and some of them continue this behavior into adulthood.
I used to hang around with a kid that would do all kinds of crazy sh_t to get attention. On Christmas day he got a 10-speed English bicycle from his parents... and rode it into a pond. One time, I caught him tightening a belt around his neck behind his garage... he said it was 'cool' cause he almost passed-out doing it.
A few years ago, I heard that he died of a heroin overdose at 48.
Ha Ha Ha! I remember those; Boy, can you imagine the Ritalin they'd stuff into a kid who sang one of those songs now?