Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 10, 1993 TAG: 9301120116
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
LAKE RIDGE: GLIMPSES OF THE NIGHTMARE
It's one of those suburban havens that pop culture says Americans aspire to - a Brady Bunch neighborhood of large homes and privileged teen-agers.But on Oct. 7, the residents of Lake Ridge in Northern Virginia got a taste of the urban nightmare they see on the news every day from Washington, D.C.:
Three 15-year-old boys, all students at Woodbridge High School, knocked on the door of a neighborhood man and shot him in the chest when he answered, police said. Their alleged motive: The man had a flashy Mercedes in his garage.
The victim survived, but the community's sense of safety and refuge did not.
"It's kind of scary when all of a sudden that police line is in your neighborhood and not just on television anymore," said Amy Lozinak, a 17-year-old senior at Woodbridge.
Lozinak was driving home from school that afternoon when she saw the commotion in her neighbor's yard - the yellow police line, the evidence van, the uniformed officers. Her shock only worsened the next day when she learned that the alleged shooters were three boys she knew.
"A third of our violent crime is committed by a juvenile, and it's been steadily rising," said Paul Ebert, prosecutor for Prince William County, Lake Ridge and the area's 216,000 residents.
Though the overall county crime rate is going up slowly, what concerns Ebert and other officials is the rapidly growing desire of juveniles for guns.
"They're faddish," Ebert said. "We've had a couple of cases where kids had gotten guns and they didn't do anything with them other than take them to school and show them around.
The trend reflects shifts statewide. Although crime traditionally has been the plague of the poor - and in Virginia, that often means young black males - today's violence cuts across racial and economic lines.
The three arrested in the October shooting were "average, white, typical middle-class kids," said Lozinak, the high-school senior. "If you ask me, I would say a lot of it is kids are bored. They have everything they want and nothing to do."
Students had seen this kind of thing coming for some time, but parents and teachers were disturbed by what they learned when the high school followed up the shooting with a cable TV talk show on violence.
"Students told us in the program that when they go to parties on weekends or to the malls, it's not unusual for somebody to be armed," said Tom Gaul, assistant superintendent of schools for the Lake Ridge area.
Woodbridge High School has wasted no time responding to what some fear are the first signs of a major problem. A teen-violence panel of parents, teachers and students is gearing up for its third meeting.
Students like Tony L. Hall II, another friend of one of the boys arrested in the shooting incident, hope those steps will keep Lake Ridge from degenerating into the kind of dangerous area he lived in three years ago.
"This is kind of good compared to where I used to live," Hall said. "There were a lot more gangs and stuff, more hangouts, more violence. . . . I mean, I hated it there.
Where Hall used to live is Springfield, another suburb a few miles closer to Washington.