I am still in shock as to what happened today after school. At about 2:50 (the time I am packing my things to leave) I hear a teacher yell for our Principal and start running down the hall towards the North Avenue exit (a super busy main street on the westside of the city). I run after to see if someone was hurt or if anyone needed help.
As soon as I made it out of the doors I saw our ENTIRE student body and some of their peeps from the block literally sprawled across North Avenue (Blocking all 4 lanes of traffic!) while at least 2 girls were fighting. I am not over stating when I say it was a street riot. The Principal, Assistant Principal, and Security were trying to pull people off of each other. The two warring girls were on opposite sides of the street while we tried to maintain peace and get our students to leave when a whole pack of students crossed the street and the brawl started again. All 4 lanes of traffic were stopped. Some of the students were leaning and punching while on the cars that had no where to go.
We called the police within a matter of minutes when the first brawl started. (Remember the time was 2:50) The second brawl stopped. We pulled some of the girls into the school who were fighting to try to stop the fighting. While those girls were inside another brawl started with friends of the girls. Again North Avenue was blocked. While the Principal and Assistant Principal were trying to break that up the girls pulled inside began fighting. We were pulling them off of each other. Meanwhile our entire student body and a bunch of peeps from the block are outside. By the time we got the fighting outside stopped it was 3:30. Still no police arrived.
I stayed outside to make sure the students getting on the bus really got on the bus and did not stay to fight some more. Once insde the school another fight broke out with the girls. We finally got them into seperate classrooms and the office. While they were in the classrooms they began calling their own people to come up to the school.
Our Principal went into each room. I am not sure what was said. The girls were still in the school. Not to be released until a parent came to get them. By now it was 4:00 and still no police. One of the girls mother's showed up with about 10 young men and came into the school. It looked like it was going to be set off again. We called the police AGAIN and waited. Finally we were able to get the boys to wait outside but the dammage was done. While the police finally came the boys had left to go down to Cicero Avenue (it is a HUGE intersection of North Avenue with 6 lanes.)
The police told us they would try to have a car by the school between 2:30 and 3:00 and told us they had to leave because a fight broke out on North and Cicero they had to stop. That fight was obviously an extension of what happened by our school.
I am still in utter shock that the police were called several times due to the magnitude of the brawls and it took from 2:50-4:05 till any police arrived at the school.
I would not be suprized if there was not a shooting in the area tonight. I am sure tomorrow will be just as bad if not deadly. I just had one of my favorite students return to school after he was shot at a party. 2 other people died that night but the bullet only went through his shoulder. He is 17 years old!
