Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 19, 1994 TAG: 9410190061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SARAH HUNTLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A 17-year-old boy was attacked by a group of youths last week as he left the downtown branch of the Roanoke Public Library, his arms full of books and photocopies for a school project on Mahatma Gandhi and nonviolence.
The victim and his 11-year-old sister were walking across the library's lawn to their car around 7:30 p.m., just before sundown, on Oct. 11 when four boys stopped them.
"They said my daughter was bad-mouthing their mamas," said the victim's mother, who was inside the library checking out books when the attack occurred. "Those were the words they used. Then they started hitting my son with their fists."
Three of the four boys pummeled the youth as his sister looked on, horrified.
"They were blocking her way into the library. She was frozen," the mother said. "After they beat him up, they just walked on. It was as if they had stopped to say hello."
When the mother came out of the library and found her son injured in the car, she took him to Lewis-Gale Hospital and called police. The victim was treated for a concussion and large bruises and swollen lumps around his eyes, nose and forehead. A week after the attack, he still suffers from memory loss. He remembers nothing about the attack.
"He kept telling me all the way to the hospital that he was fine, but he was getting more and more incoherent," the boy's mother said. "Most of that day is wiped out of his memory."
Police believe the attack was unprovoked, a random act of violence. No one has been arrested for the assault.
Because the assailants apparently did not know the boy, the Roanoke Times & World-News is withholding his name to protect him from possible reprisals.
Emily Keyser, acting city librarian at the main branch, said violence is uncommon there. She was unaware of the attack until later in the week, when the victim's father called.
"I've been here for 28 years, and I can't remember a single case where a gang of older people beat up a child," Keyser said. "We're distressed that anything like this would happen near us."
There have been assaults in nearby Elmwood Park, a police spokesman said, but most have flared up among homeless people.
"It's not as if this happened in a dangerous place in the city," the boy's mother said. "It was daylight, at the library."
by CNB