The graphic video showing the fatal beating to death of 16 year old Derrion Albert, a sophomore honor roll student at Christian Fenger Academy High School has ramped up pressure on Chicago officials to address chronic violence that has led to dozens of deaths of city teens each year.
Derrion Albert.
Albert was killed in a melee near the school that police believe is a continuation of ongoing tensions between Fenger students that are members of rival gangs. Albert was knocked unconscious when he was struck in the head with a board and a second person punched him in the face. Albert regained consciousness and was trying to get up when he was attacked a second time by five people.
Albert's mom said witnesses told her that her son "was trying to help another student and kind of got mixed in with the crowd of the fight and he was hit."
Prosecutors charged four teenagers Monday with fatally beating Albert, who was walking to a bus stop when he got caught up in the mob street fighting, authorities said.
The violence stemmed from a shooting early Thursday morning involving two groups of students from different neighborhoods, said Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for the Cook County prosecutor's office. When school ended, members of the groups began fighting near the Agape Community Center.
Prosecutors charged Silvonus Shannon, 19, Eugene Riley, 18, Eric Carson, 16, and Eugene Bailey, 18, with first-degree murder, Simonton said.
Chicago police said they were looking for at least three more suspects, but would not discuss a possible motive for the attack.
Fenger students said Albert's death intensified tensions at the school, with arguments about him breaking out in hallways all day Monday. Several blocks away, a memorial erected on the spot where he was beaten was burned down. Police also increased patrols before and after school and in the neighborhood.
"They're still trying to retaliate," said sophomore Toni Gardner, 15. She did not elaborate.
For Chicago, a sharp rise in violent student deaths during the past three school years — most from shootings off school property — have been a tragedy and an embarrassment.
Before 2006, an average of 10-15 students were fatally shot each year. That climbed to 24 fatal shootings in the 2006-07 school year, 23 deaths and 211 shootings in the 2007-08 school year and 34 deaths and 290 shootings last school year.
But Annette Holt, mother of Blair Holt, a Chicago Public Schools student who was shot on a city bus two years ago, said Albert represented "another promising future, just snuffed out because of violence."
"Someone said he (Derrion) was in the wrong place at the wrong time," she said. "No, he wasn't. He was in the right place. He was coming from school."
Source: Associated Press.
Really sad.
