11-Year-Old Ohio Girl Shot for Playing on Neighbor's Lawn

[paulhailes]

When I was growing up on Houston, we had a huge amount of kids in our post-WWII GI Bill neighborhood. At 10 years old, we played outside every Friday and Saturday night, running through neighbors' yards to well past 10:00PM and no one cared. No one got shot; no one even thought about pulling a gun in a group of kids that age. No one would shoot a 10 year old kid for walking across their lawn, or because some other kid bumped into his car. "It's 10:00 o'clock and where are your children?" Yeah, I remember that stupid commercial. How about this one, "It's 10:00 o'clock, where is your common sense; or your humanity, or appreciation of human life?"

This shooting is complete crap and there's no excuse for it.

Chas.

I remember when I was a kid and was playing with friends we would run across our neighbors yards all the time, we would even play hide a seek in their yards (they had really big trees). One of our favorite games was night tag... which was played at night... in the dark, when playing the only thing we really thought about was watch out for cars. If while playing we broke something in our neighbors yard you had better believe that the next day we were over there apologizing and seeing what we could do to fix or replace whatever we broke. In my opinion if you don't want the neighborhood kids in your yard inform their parents don't shoot them. I believe that sometimes (often) gun owner get steamrolled by the media, but this time no I cant see how this could have possibly been acceptable.

[Oldgringo]

Why is an 11 year old outside at 10:40pm???

...in someone else's yard?

I hope you don't think Texas law would make this a good shooting.

Chas.

Of course not. Odd as it may seem, I don't plan on or look forward to shooting anybody at any time.

Yes, I remember it well. Back in the late 40's and early 50's most all kids stayed outside and played until dark and after because we didn't have AC, TV's, computer games, I-pods and all sorts of other electronic gizmos. Our mothers didn't work and were there for us day and night, maybe even sitting on the porch visiting with the neighbors as we played. We even had toy guns and played "cops and robbers", "cowboys and indians", "hide and seek", "kick the can" and "war", etc, We didn't know anyone who didn't have a mother AND a dad at home; drugs, sex fiends and drive-by shootings were unheard of.

Alas, that was then and this is now.