Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 4, 1994 TAG: 9402040054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"If a kid picks up a gun, pulls the trigger and shoots somebody, then he should be held accountable for going to jail and serving a life sentence," Janea Wells, 15, told a congressional hearing on children and guns.
The ninth-grader from Washington cried while recalling the death of a friend shot 17 times "right beside me." She said that since a killer "took somebody else's life, I feel his life should be taken in jail."
Fernando Mateo Jr., of Irvington, N.Y., who gave his father the idea to offer a successful toys-for-guns exchange in New York in December, was equally strict.
"If a child knows what he's doing and can distinguish right from wrong, he should be put away for life," said Mateo, 14, adding that such punishment should be imposed on killers as young as 11 years old.
Eleven white, black and Hispanic youths testified before the House Judiciary Committee's crime subcommittee, explaining the fascination with guns and the toll the weapons have taken on their young lives.
"The kids who use guns think it will make people look up to them," said 14-year-old Alicia Brown, a junior high school student in Washington. She has lost five friends to gunfire since she was 12.
Lamented panel Chairman Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., "We can't bring back the loved ones you've lost. We can't bring back your lost childhoods."
The Senate, meanwhile, addressed school violence Thursday by approving an amendment to an education bill that would authorize $175 million in grants to school districts most troubled by high rates of crime and violence. Of the total, $75 million would be for the current year, with $20 million already appropriated, and $100 million would be for fiscal 1995.
Many of the children testifying before the House panel urged the lawmakers to support more after-school programs to keep young people off the streets and occupied with positive aims.
They told of victimized friends, relatives and neighbors. Of bullets flying so haphazardly that they are afraid to go out of their homes. Of minor disputes, even a misinterpreted glance, leading to gunfire.
"A friend of mine was shot in the head over a basketball bet," said Rushon Harrison, a 17-year-old high school junior in New York. The friend survived, he said, but such a sight "is not soon erased from your mind."
Members of Congress pressed the young people to recommend sentences for young killers after Zoe Johnstone told them that a juvenile got just eight years - and would be freed at age 25 - for shooting her father in July 1992 during a mugging in San Francisco.
Brief juvenile sentences for major crimes are insufficient, said sixth-grader Tiffany Cruz of Brooklyn, N.Y., whose principal, Patrick Daly, was killed in the cross-fire of rival drug dealers in 1992.
These killers "know they're going to get out at the age of 25 and they can do whatever they want to do all over again," she said.
Juvenile arrests for murder rose by almost 93 percent between 1982 and 1991, according to testimony, with 80 Eighty percent of juvenile murders involving firearms.
by CNB