Under Fire, Under Scrutiny
Above Prejudice, Above Expectations
A screenshot taken from a video article by whoTV.com, a follow up story following SHOTS FIRED: Gunfire After Rival Basketball Game, entitled SCHOOL SHOOTING: Culprit May Have Gang Ties. This was posted the Feb 3.
A crisp and cold Friday night after the varsity basketball game the residual energy and disappointment still swirl in your bones as you wait for a ride. People are yelling and then you hear it, piercing and screaming though the evening air: gun shots.
Friday, January 31 North faced Roosevelt and lost with a score of 71-60, and Jean Schwendau, a North High science teacher, attended the North versus Roosevelt game. “It was a really upbeat, high energy sense of community in the night. Afterwards, everyone was just kind of hanging out.”
Schwendau describes the scene of the shooting as an eye-witness and does so with detailed remembrance. “There were not a whole lot of people out there. It was long enough after the game. There was a few groups of kids yelling. One girl yelled, ‘I’m gonna F up your car!’ And somebody yelled, ‘So and so and so and so get in this car immediately!’ They were just getting yelled at by their mom. Then I got in my car and then I heard ‘bang, bang, bang’ and I looked out and there was a kid with a gun. Then, he shot again.”
“He turned away from me and started walking across the street into the bushes over at Birdland Park. People up on the porch (area before North’s front doors) had gone in, and didn’t come out. People kind of ducked out of the way, and that’s all I saw (be)cause I was so focused on that kid [the shooter], and just getting somebody to come outside. That’s when I got out and started screaming, ‘He’s got a gun!’ and I started running, and you know how you run in dreams? And it’s really slow and you never get there. It was like that, it was really weird. It was very surreal.”
“So, I got up to the porch and was still screaming, and then Mrs. Van De Walle and Mrs. Ramirez, they came out and the police officer came out, and I just told them what happened. The police officer went across the street and got on his little radio thing. I was crying cause I was freaked out,” Schwendau said.
Principal Mike Vukovich was in the alumni room, a room tucked inside our library, at the time of the shooting. He was visiting with alumni and basketball players enjoying pizza and conversation when he got the call from Van De Walle.
“They couldn’t find any shell casings, so there was really a lot of questions about what really did happen, but there was multiple witnesses who heard it and saw and said that there was a gunshot. It wasn’t till the next morning that I found that there was a student from a different school that claimed to have been hit in the buttocks,” said Vukovich.
Schwendau, as an eye-witness, was confused when she was watching the news the following evening because it reported a girl had been admitted to the hospital for injury at the scene she was a witness to.
Schwendau expresses her confusion, “I wondered if there had been a second incident, like if somebody had come back, (be)cause it was so different from what I had heard. Monday I came in and asked Mr. Vukovich if something else had happened cause there had been no child hurt anywhere.”
An officer of the law for 30 years and North High’s School Resource Officer, Officer Bjurstrom brings us even closer to the origins of this confusion. “We didn’t know about it till later on that night. Until, a girl showed up at the hospital with a gunshot wound to the buttocks,” he said.
There still seems to be a lot of confusion and mystery surrounding this incident and surrounding the local news coverage of said incident.
Vukovich was disappointed with the media coverage and the inaccuracies following the event. “I do believe that [local news reporters] took just one report, ran with the story, and put our picture up there. And it wasn’t inaccurate reporting: there was a shooting. The only part that was inaccurate was actually on the police report, when they talked about a few fights during the course of the night, but that never happened. You can ask anyone at the game, there was an argument between some adults. I don’t really blame the journalists, per se, for putting that in there, but would I have liked them to call me up and say, ‘Hey, we read there was a bunch of fights, could you explain it?’ What I did appreciate was when I talked to news stations about some of the information being misleading, they came and interviewed me here and put me on the news to clear it up.”
“Generally, that’s what you find with the news, they don’t focus on being accurate, they focus on being the first,” Officer Bjurstrom said.
Many local news article have quotes of an unnamed witness having heard shouts of “C-block” and “32” which are both gang affiliated phrases; which was unheard of from our eye-witness Scwendeau.
When asked if he thought this incident was gang related Vukovich replied, “I think there was a gang involved. It sounds like from what I hear that’s more and more what it is, and there are issues around Des Moines, but it’s all around Des Moines, not just the north side.”
Officer Bjurstrom added, “We have it here, and they have it at every Des Moines high schools, or for that matter, any high school, anywhere. At times they don’t get a long, the opposing gangs, and generally there might be a fight. Generally, it’s not any worse than that. At least not at school.”
Although gang activity doesn’t seem present in these hallways Polar Bears call home, they do not see this whole school every single day. Students see the route they take from class to class, the classroom they inhabit every other day, the corner of this community where they eat their lunch, and the activities they take part in; this may seem like a lot, but with the uncountable combinations possible each student still only sees one of them.
Vukovich describes the gang situation when he first arrived three years ago and the unique approach North administrators use to combat gang activity. “The first year that I got here with Mr. Smith we really paid attention to [gang activity]. It was pretty big. We had lots of colors, we had lots of people. Now, were they truly gang members in the community? I don’t know, but we really talked about when they come in they’re North High Polar Bears, their only colors are green, black, and pink.
“If they are affiliated with gangs outside, then that’s what they need to do outside. Really what we did was maintain relationships with a lot of kids, and they kept it out and they still do. We hardly have any issues here with those types of things going on; like they do in other schools. So, I would say that ‘are there gang members that go to North High School?’ Possibly. Do we have gang issues and gang violence? No.”
Vukovich openly expresses what weighs on his mind at night, who he prays for before the midnight skies, and what hopes and dreams are truly close to his heart. “You asked me about my concern. I don’t stay awake concerned about the shooting in the parking lot. I stay awake concerned about the 1,200 kids, praying that they’re in a warm spot to sleep, and have breakfast in the morning, and somebody that cares about them.”
“If they’re trauma impacted; that they’re getting the services that they need, that we’re preparing them for their ACTs. (Be)cause I know that even though they don’t know what that is sometimes, it’s important to getting to college which we know is important to breaking the cycle of poverty. That is what concerns me. A shooting in the parking lot to me is ‘ehh’. Our kids deal with more dangerous things every day.” Well, you can also check these guys out to know more about alcohol addiction and its recovery.
It’s hard to believe sometimes there are good guys out there who care about a single student, one whom is hidden behind a mass of statistics and a mass of other students. To entertain the thought that there are administrators fighting for them with good intentions and big dreams is not very tangible. People who believe in them and know they are more than your financial situation, home-life situation, color of their skin, record of criminal activity, grade point averages, annual summative test scores, and the representation of their high school in local news media.
They can see them as a community of young human beings who have voices, and needs, and problems. It only takes realizing that they too are a community of human beings who have voices, needs, and problems and so happen to be older; when it is realized they just want the best for them and they are fellow human beings, then students can better cooperate with educators and administrators with respect and understanding.
