Editor :
Thursday, May 24, 2012, as I was driving to work with my seven-year-old son, we witnessed a fight taking place between two high school girls.
We were nearing the parking lot of KFC when my son noticed something happening in the parking lot.
I veered my car across the lanes from left to right, cutting off the other cards and headed to KFC.
I was expecting other cars to do the same but found that I was the only one heading towards the fight.
Many bystanders left when they saw an adult arriving on scene.
As I parked my car, I saw a girl clearly getting the upper hand on her opponent who was on the ground.
She was holding the head of her opponent and bashing it repeatedly on the pavement. No one was intervening.
Some bystanders were even recording the fight with their cell phones.
If you happened to miss it I am certain that it will be posted on YouTube.
I started yelling and honing the horn of my car.
I even yelled at one fairly big guy to stop them.
I finally signaled to a car heading our way to phone the police. I don’t know what happened to the two angry girls.
I don’t know if anything is going to happen to the bystanders who were witnessing, therefore fully accepting this act.
When I arrived at work, I was shaking. I also had to help my son untangle these images and try to make sense of what he had seen.
I learned later on that this kind of bullying is planned. One student challenges another to a fight and decides on when and where.
It seems that this act of violence is almost acceptable and normal for young people.
Is this a testimony of us as a society? Don’t we have more constructive things to do than go around and fight?
When a friend of mine questioned her teenagers about this particular event, their answer was, “These fights happen all the time but usually and adult steps in before it even starts.”
This time I was too late.
Melanie Dumont
Smithers