NYC-Feature Story-World Trade Center

NYC-1990-11-11b
When Carlos's friend is stabbed, his buddies go off looking for someone to hurt (even though they don't know who did it). At first Carlos wants to go, but then he realizes that this is madness and opts to stay behind.

A Friend Was Stabbed: We Wanted Revenge

By Carlos Lopez

It was the last day before Christmas vacation. I was walking home when I saw an ambulance and cop cars by the 7-Eleven. I walked past, figuring it probably wasn't any of my business.

Then I saw Joe, a friend of mine from way back. He walked up to me and blurted out: "David got stabbed."

At first I didn't believe it. David? My friend David? Stabbed? This made no sense. Things like that didn't happen to the people I knew. It just flashed across a television screen. It didn't happen in real life.

But it had happened. The ambulance was there to pick up David, and the cop cars were there to find out what had happened.

My Friend Was Stabbed

It seemed that some guy had taken David's chain, a fake gold chain he wore everywhere. When the guy took off, David ran after him. As he got close, the guy turned and stabbed him. David lay there bleeding and the guy got away. They never caught him.

At first I couldn't believe it had happened at all. But as I was going home, I began to get angry, infuriated. I felt helpless. Here this guy had gotten away and David was left bleeding in the middle of the street. I wanted to find the guy and kill him.

I wasn't the only one. That night I went out with John, a friend of both David and me, and we hung out in a park by his house drinking.

We were both upset that the guy who stabbed David had gotten away. We couldn't do anything, David almost got killed and the guy gets away. We wanted revenge.

The next day, a few more people got together with John and me. I didn't know most of them, but most of them knew David. Everyone was out to kill someone. We were going to get in a car, cruise around the neighborhood where he got stabbed, and find the guy who did it. But the only thing that we had to go on was that he was Hispanic, he had short brown hair, and that he was pretty muscular.

We Wanted Revenge

At first I was willing to go along. Then I started to think about what we were doing-we were looking for someone to fit a general description and it occurred to me that we would probably hurt an innocent person.

"This is insane" I told them. But they didn't listen. Most of them were just out for a fight. They didn't care who they fought. But John and I couldn't deal with hurting an innocent person. We were still angry, but we weren't going to go out and hurt someone who might just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So we left. (Of course, there were a few snide remarks from some of the people in the mob.)

From what I understand, all they ended up doing was driving around until they got tired and eventually wound up in a club somewhere.

David was in the hospital for a month. When he got out he was fine, and everyone pretty much forgot about the incident. But sometimes I think about what might have happened if I had gone with them and if we had found someone who fit the description.

"Think About It":
Prompts for discussion and/or writing:

—Was there a time when you, like Carlos, wanted revenge for something that happened to a friend? What happened to the friend? Did you eventually get revenge? Why or why not? If it was impossible to take revenge on the perpetrator (e.g, because no one knew who he was, or he had escaped) how did you feel? What did you do?

—What might have happened if Carlos and his friends had taken revenge on someone?

—What might have been a better way for Carlos's friends to deal with their anger?

Roleplay: two teens, playing Carlos and a friend. The friend wants to get revenge for David's stabbing. Carlos wants to convince him that revenge in this case is not possible, and even if it is, it will solve nothing.