Outrage Following Teens' Assault on Man Downtown
BALTIMORE (WJZ)-- People are fed up after a group of young people verbally and physically attacked a man and robbed him during the middle of the evening rush hour in downtown Baltimore earlier this week.
Investigators confirm the group is behind multiple downtown attacks.
"Are their parents aware they have conduct carrying on like that?" Mildred Gregory said.
Gregory has strong ties to Booker T. Washington Middle School, where several of the teens attended classes.
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"Where is the discipline and the moral standard at?" she said. "Their parents are really lacking into their discipline of their sons and daughters. There's something wrong with that."
WJZ spoke to a close family friend of one of the teens.
While he condemned the attack, he said don't blame the parents until you walk in their shoes.
"Two families are hurt. I don't think it's cute, cool at all because you treat everybody equal, like you want to be treated. I mean, I come from the same neighborhood most of them young guys come from. The only thing they do is look at the older people who does it and thinks it's cool, and they can do it, too, which is not cool," the family friend said.
"I didn't even know that somebody who went to her school was a part of it," Bryant Briggs said.
Briggs daughter goes to the same elementary/middle school as the youngest person charged a 12-year-old boy.
"It starts with discipline at home. It also starts with who your kids hang around. As a parent, you have to pay attention to stuff like that. I'm raising a 9-year-old daughter so I pay attention to her friends, pay attention to the type of music she listens to," Briggs said.
"The juveniles were taken to juvenile booking, and as we often discuss, they're going to be right back out on the street today," said T.J. Smith of the Baltimore Police.
But will they learn their lesson?
Brihayanna Gray, herself the mother of a young child, hopes so.
"Maybe programs to help them instead of a slap on the wrist and then they're back out here with no real help because they're just going to continue to do the same things," Gray said.
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