My nephew, the only grandson resulting from my father of eight children to carry on the family name ended up in the hospital with his girlfriend last Friday night.
He is a 6’ 2" strapping good looking specimen of a young man who was a star linebacker before recently graduating high school. He constantly works out in the gym and is studying to become a fire-fighter.
Apparently, during the end of a verbal confrontation at a party which seemed to been resolved, he was hit over the head by another guy with a 26 ounce liquor bottle from behind, and the broken bottle was subsequently applied to his face. He went down whereupon the two perps started kicking the shit out of him. Then his girlfriend jumped on top of him to protect him and got kicked all over as well. Let me tell you that my estimation of her just jumped 1000%. The two perps are charged with something but I don’t know exactly what. They both ended up in jail.
My nephew received 26 stitches, mostly on his upper lip and his girlfriend is reported to have received nerve damage.
My brother’s biggest concern at the moment is the peer pressure on his son to seek violent retribution which he certainly is most capable of. I pointed out to my brother that perhaps his son should be aware that the possibility of a civil suit given the criminal nature of the event could result in a load of cash which might be preferable to him.My nephew, who shaves his head, might not be as good looking anymore.
Other than my concern for my nephew, what pisses me off is the lack of morals exhibited by a lot of young men today. I’m 55 years old and have been in plently of fights when I was younger, but it was understood that you don’t hit someone when they are down and you never hit a girl. The intent of winning the fight was to dominate and embarrass the opponent into submission In this case I can only assume the intent was to permanently maim if not kill my nephew.
Over the last few years I seem to notice an increase of deaths due to teenage violence. The term swarming comes to mind. Why? How come there is such a lack of morals or control with these criminally violent teenagers? And I’m talking about middle class teenagers, which is what we mostly have here on Vancouver Island.
My 14 year old daughter is going to feel this. Her mother swears she won’t allow her to go to any more parties. Fuck !
Yeah, it is some kind of creepy sub-human manifestation. The son of friends of mine was mugged a while ago. He offered no resistance (there were 4 guys robbing him) and gave them everything he had - money, wallet, phone, MP3 player. They knocked him down, kicked him and then one of them JUMPED up and down on his head.
Luckily he survived and wasn’t too badly effected but the idiot who jumped on his head was just lucky to not end up a murderer.
What a minute, Reena Virk… Happened here. I think youth violence happens here, and elsewhere, a lot.
I don’t know what’s going on. Kids these days seem to be a lot more violent than I remember from my high school days. I don’t have an answer. I don’t have kids, so I’m not directly involved in youth culture.
the honor of fighting has completely disappeared anymore, hitting him from behind with a bottle is the most cowardly way to do things, and then to kick him on the ground just sucks,
i can’t believe the girlfriend though, that girl is seriously brave-
growing up, i always wanted to get into a fist fight just to see what parts of me would stick around, a “real” fight never really happened since most of them were sort of prior agreements that we would fight, and we were most likely friends anyway- but one thing we understood were the basics you described, anything going on other than that is lame- and i hope the police um, show them a nice time, in jail
id go for the criminal charges, maybe get some money, obviously fighting them back could only turn worse- theyre not going to fight fair apparently
kudos to your nephew and his girl, man- i wonder if my lady would do that for me?
Have your brother work on the fire-fighter angle as well; your nephew might not be able to get a job if he has a criminal record. It is pointless for him to piss his life away over some knuckle draggers. He is probably thinking more of retribution over his girlfriend than himself. You and/or your brother may want to get her involved in working on your nephew to convince him. And you may want to work on her to get her into the family; she sounds like a great person!
Laws vary and IANAL, but the bottle sounds like assault with a deadly weapon to me, and “shod feet” are sometimes considered the same. The legal system should be the court of first resort.
Reena Virk got a lot of publicity. But that was mostly girls except for one guy and that was clearly an intent to murder. I recall about seven or eight years ago when a young co-worker was beaten by teenagers outside the Sydney 7-11 and put in the hospital for two weeks. That was the same location where a teenager in the previous year or two was beaten to death by head stomping by a group of teenagers. The resulting sentence for one of them was two years as I best can recall. And you may remember that guy in Esquimalt who suffered brain damage as a result of swarming by teenagers . He had an incomplete recovery that took months if not years. Fuck!
Have your nephew be intent on seeking retribution, the type the will stick with those assholes for the rest of their lives—and that means the legal type. Bloodying the faces of the jerks might make him feel good for a week or two, buty after that those asshats can simply forget about it. No, make them pay in a way they’ll never forget. Jail time. A criminal record (which will also go a long way in protecting him, and others from them in the future). And don’t forget a civil case. Make them pay so half of every paycheck they get for sweeping up floors for the rest of their pathetic lives goes into his bank accoount.
I wish your nephew and his girlfriend a full and speedy recovery.
I don’t know that teenagers are signifigantly more violent these days. One thing occurs to me: If you take it as a given that in any population, there is a small minority that loves to gang up and viciously attack the weaker, their has been (to the credit of society) a decline in “socially acceptable” outlets for this sort of “swarm” attack. These same kids, feeling this same rage, might have reflexively gone looking for homosexuals or minorities twenty years ago, and it wouldn’t have made the news.
It’s execrable what happened to your nephew, and the emotional side of me hopes that the perps end up in prison and similar things happen to them.
That said - all these people that are saying that fighting used to be more honorable either grew up in a very different environment to me, or are idealizing the past. When I was at school, the goal of a fight was to get the other guy on the ground so you could “put the boot in”. I lost count of the number of times there’d be a circle of shouting youths, while one of the combattants kicked the shit out of his fallen adversary, way beyond what was necessary to ensure victory. I saw a few fights that were started with some kind of sucker punch too.
DarrenSWere you in school in the 50s and 60s ? Savannah, make that Sidney not Sydney. :smack: Plynck I just got off the phone with my brother. Sound advice!
It turns out that the perp who smashed the bottle over my nephews head was a known coke dealer to the police. He and the other perp had crashed the party being held at a friend of my nephew. That is what started the verbal confrontation.
This little item is significant in that the cops at first considered the incident drug related. In my brother’s discussion with the cops, after my brother told them that his son doesn’t do drugs, they said,“well you wouldn’t know, would you”
My brother invited them to take blood for a drug screen, which was subsequently done and my nephew came out clean.
If you can remember growing up, and if you attended any teenage parties, you will recall that parents are totally unaware of the consumption of grass and alcohol.
It seems by your OP that may be a catalyst to that punk who assaulted your nephew. Young people don’t seem to be able to handle their high/liquor and they get violent and do unexcusable shit like that. And hitting someone from behind is an act of cowardance!
I agree with this - nowadays there just aren’t as many minority groups that it’s “acceptable” to beat up on. I think another reason for it isn’t just a growth in violence, but a lacking of empathy - teenagers like this often just don’t care at all about anyone else. Kicking a person when they’re down is just fun - they feel as much guilt as they would kicking a can or something. It’s very disturbing.
I’m sorry for what happened to your nephew and his girlfriend, TFD - do they know yet how serious the nerve damage is?
My arm was injured while I was in the Army and I lost some feeling in it and it was swollen. When a doctor looked me over he said I had suffered “some nerve damage.” I was too drugged on pain medication to know precisely what was going on but that sounded pretty bad to me at the time. Luckily it ended up just meaning I had a pinched nerve, and after awhile my arm ended up just fine.
