Violence is uninvited guest at graduation

For one Pennsylvania school, graduation became a lesson about violence. The following article is taken from the New York Times News Service.

By David Kocieniewski
New York Times News Service
Published June 11, 2006

LEVITTOWN, Pa. -- For the 415 seniors at Harry S Truman High School, graduation day offered one final lesson--unplanned and most unwelcome--about gangs, violence and intimidation.

Members of the Bloods street gang reportedly threatened to kill the school's class president, who is a star athlete and honor student. And given the outbreak of gang-related shootings here in recent months, that threat transformed the annual commencement ceremony in this rough-hewn Philadelphia suburb into an odd pageant of anxiety and heightened security.

The 4,500 friends, relatives and spectators who arrived for the ceremony were forced to pass through metal detectors before they could enter the outdoor stadium, which was decorated with banners, bunting and sprays of yellow carnations. Undercover police detectives milled through the crowd.

Yet when the ceremonies began Friday afternoon, the class of '06 was missing its president, Tyrone Lewis, whom police had banned from the ceremony because they believed that he and his family were in danger from the Bloods.

Lewis' sister had agreed to testify against gang members in a New Jersey murder trial, and Lewis recently was shot at by men the police said they believed belonged to the gang.

Also absent from the ceremony was Ahman Fralin, 18, a senior who has been hospitalized and paralyzed from the neck down since April, when he was shot in the spine as he sat beside Lewis.

Despite protests from Lewis' mother, who threatened to sue the school district unless her son was permitted on stage, he delivered his speech from a secret spot via a video hookup.

After being welcomed with raucous applause by the crowd watching a large television screen in the stadium, Lewis, 18, made only passing reference to the circumstances that made him an exile at his own graduation.

He asked the crowd to pray for Fralin and suggested that the police lockdown surrounding the graduation ceremony should come as little surprise in an age when police dogs search school lockers for drugs and students have their knapsacks checked for guns each morning.

"We've had some crazy days, but we've also had inspiring days as well," he said.
(Follow this link for more information about this graduation and the audio to the valedictorian's speech.)