
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 5, 1993                   TAG: 9403180030
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-15   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By ALICE NAGIEL DUEHL
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

INNOCENCE AT GUNPOINT

IT'S THURSDAY morning and the house is strangely quiet except for the radio. The news just over, a jazzy Scott Joplin tune fills the kitchen. It's one of those rare mornings when I don't have to rush off to work. A middle-of-the-week day with the house to myself. I look ahead to my unstructured time filled with have-to's and feel the day suddenly shrinking. Still, I linger over my coffee, the newspaper spread out on the table in front of me.

And then, like in some sentimental country song, my eyes overflow with tears and I'm crying. Yes, great, big, heaving sobs that come from someplace deep down in the pit of my stomach. I've just finished reading a news article about a teen-ager from Vinton who is forced at gunpoint to drive a strange man to Greensboro, N.C. The boy is named Tony. He's 16 years old and only recently got his driving permit.

Tony was driving home from his brother's house, where he had been helping to build a cage for his brother's pet iguana. He had just pulled up to a stop-sign intersection and was waiting for a man to cross the street in front of his pickup truck. But instead of crossing the street, like ordinary people do every day, the man opened the unlocked, passenger-side door and got into Tony's truck. When Tony told him to get out, he busted a speaker and pulled out a gun.

Why? Why at that very moment? Why this truck? Why this innocent-looking boy with the baseball cap and hooded sweat shirt, on his way home to where his mother and father were expecting him to arrive at any minute? His parents waited - his mother probably looking at the clock, not sure if she should be scared, angry or both.

I can see her going about her evening chores, trying to rationalize away the heavy feeling of panic lodged in her chest. How could she have endured that wait, had she known what was really happening to Tony at that very moment? Had she known that her son was at the mercy of an angry, gun-holding stranger, whose only interest was in using Tony to get somewhere he wanted to go?

As it was, Tony was very late - Greensboro is a long way from Vinton. I picture him in that nightmare, clutching the steering wheel with sweaty palms, never knowing if this man is going to kill him. When they finally arrived at a motel in Greensboro, the man made him lie down on the floor board of his truck and told him he would kill him if he so much as lifted his head. Tony lay there for almost an hour before he summoned up the nerve to get up. Shaking but relieved, he found a phone and called his mother. Then he called the police.

So why am I crying? This has little to do with me. At this very moment, both my sons are safely in school. Besides, my older son is only 13 and has a long way to go before he starts driving. And Tony did get home, after all. The newspaper photo shows him seated in his pickup truck, both arms leaning on the steering wheel. The words under the photograph read: "Tony Hamlin, 16, in his truck safely parked at home."

Yet, in that picture, he's looking straight at me, and his boyish, young face haunts me. I have this urge to put my arms around him. I wonder if at night that stranger still invades his dreams. You see, Tony could easily be my son or any one of my son's friends. And the world is full of strange, angry men holding guns or knives, and there is nothing I or Tony's mother or anyone else can do about it. We can't keep Tony "safely parked at home."

I take my empty coffee cup to the sink and while I'm rinsing it, I make a mental note to remind myself to tell my children that they should always make sure to keep the passenger-side car door locked. It's another one of those safety tips mothers pass on to their children, like not letting on that they are home alone when someone calls, or wearing their seat belts, or using potholders when they take something out of the oven.

These "lessons," which I have tried to instill in my children, hoping to protect them from harm, give me the illusion that I have some control over their safety. But I haven't come up with one for what to do when someone points a gun in your face.

I look up at the clock and suddenly the day seems to stretch itself out in front of me. It feels like forever until my sons are due home from school.

Alice Nagiel Duehl, education coordinator for the Refugee Resettlement Office in Roanoke, lives in Fincastle and is the mother of two boys.

by CNB