
DATE: Friday, March 21, 1997                TAG: 9703210647

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LORRAINE EATON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  115 lines

GRIM BEACH GUN PROGRAM GIVES NINTH-GRADERS GLIMPSE OF REALITY

No one in the room has eaten lunch. That's good, because projected on the classroom wall at Kellam High School is a larger-than-life picture of a kid who has been shot in the face.

Skin stretches across his forehead where the bullet entered, around a left eye that is swollen shut. His left ear is intact. The rest of his face is a glistening, scarlet mass of tissue and muscle. No nose, no mouth, no chin, no cheeks.

``Gross, man,'' one student said, putting his head down on the desk. Other students stared.

This was the final - and most extreme - in a series of graphic slides that ninth-graders at Kellam High School saw this week as part of Options, Choices, and Consequences, a program designed to raise awareness and prevent gun violence among teens. The joint effort between Virginia Beach police, the schools, Virginia Beach General Hospital, businesses and other partners is modeled on a Seattle program and is expected to reach all 1,200 freshmen in Virginia Beach high schools by next year.

``The time has come for kids to really understand what gun violence is,'' said Lt. James Cervera, the coordinator of the city's Community Policing Project. ``It's an in-your-face view of life.''

The classes meet for an hour on three consecutive days in place of health lessons. Each day brings a new bite of reality.

On Day One, Lt. Lynelle M. Roberts, a pediatric resident at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, grips the remote of the slide projector, intent on dispelling some myths.

``TV makes it seem glamorous to have a gun,'' says Roberts, who is in uniform. ``TV makes it seem like you can get shot in the leg and limp off. . .

Projected on the screen behind her is the midsection of a teen-ager who has been shot in the stomach. Off to one side is a pile of swollen intestines. The next slide is after surgery. The boy lies on the bed, his stomach as distended as that of a pregnant woman about to give birth. The teen's intestines are so swollen that doctors could not tuck them back inside of his stomach, nor could his stomach be stitched closed. Each day as the swelling subsides doctors will push more of the intestines back inside him.

``So what happens next?'' a girl in the back row asks. ``How will he go to the bathroom?''

``I'm glad you asked that,'' Roberts replies.

She picks up a clear, plastic colostomy bag and explains that it will be attached to an artificial anal opening around the boy's abdomen. She explains exactly how it works . . . and smells.

``And when it's over, he'll wear one of these,'' Roberts said, tossing an adult diaper to a boy in the front row.

Props are part of the course. Later a chest tube is passed among the students, then a catheter which, Roberts explains, is inserted into the body to drain the bladder. There's also a used bullet, to demonstrate that bullets explode inside the body and rip everything to shreds.

After each slide and each real life story, Roberts asks what the victim could have done differently.

``You do have choices and options almost all of the time,'' Roberts said. ``Think about your future; it doesn't all end at Kellam.''

On Day Two, the emphasis shifts from medical consequences to legal consequences for teen-agers involved in handgun violence.

Officer W. Scott Humphrey, who oversees the course at Kellam, plucks seven students from the class and asks them to stand in front of the room.

Then with the help of Virginia Beach Assistant City Attorney Lawrence S. Spencer Jr., he tells a tale of a fatal shooting at a school. In the scenario, several students know that two boys had guns, others see them with guns in the bathroom before the shooting took place and don't tell.

``So you're going to jail,'' Spencer says, pointing to a student. He moves down the line. ``Your're going to jail. You're going to jail. You're going to jail.''

Everyone is going to jail, except the innocent victim. Those who knew about the gun but didn't tell are accomplices to the murder, as is the boy who yelled ``shoot.''

``That's not fair,'' said Victoria James, 15.

But that's reality.

On Day Three, the emphasis is on personal understanding of gun violence. A 28-minute video features emotional testimonials from teen-agers who either used guns and were convicted of felonies or were victims of gun violence, including a star football player who is now in a wheelchair.

Every one of them had choices, Humphrey said. The boy who shot the bully in the leg could have gone to his parents or pressed charges. The football player who was shot could have avoided being in a place where violence was likely to happen. The kids in the seemingly safe school bathroom should have left the scene as soon as they sensed trouble and notified an adult.

Choices.

Each day's lesson ended with a discussion about choices the teen-agers could have made.

``This is not a program designed to scare you or intimidate you,'' Humphrey said. ``We are giving you some facts and scenarios to show you that these can be some of the consequences of seeing a gun or having a gun.''

Think about gun violence before it happens, he said.

Student Jay Dulaney said that the program might work for some kids, but he questioned focusing it on ninth-graders.

``I learned it the hard way,'' said Dulaney, who at age 13 did time in detention homes, the result of firing a BB gun at a woman and other charges. ``You can't start right now, you've got to start when they (students) are younger. It also depends on what parents teach their kids.''

Police who organized the program had the same concerns, but decided that parents might object to using the graphic material in lower grades.

Student Julia Turner gave the program a B-plus. Most effective, she said, was the slide sequence. ``In TV and movies, it's always a quick cleanup,'' Turner said. ``This was different. It made me more aware of what guns can do.'' ILLUSTRATION: D. KEVIN ELLIOTT photos/The Virginian-Pilot

Jay Dulaney said the Options, Choices, and Consequences program

would be better geared to a younger audience. Dulaney spent time in

detention homes for firing a BB gun at a woman. Victoria James is

behind him.

Virginia Beach police officer W. Scott Humphrey teaches

ninth-graders at Kellam High School about the legal realities of

guns and violence. The three-day Options, Choices, and Consequences

program is designed to raise awareness and prevent gun violence

among teens.