That is tragic beyond words. So sick.
When we moved to this neighborhood when I was 8, I got flack for being one of the only 3 'White' kids in my class the 1st week. The 2nd week they gave me a pass when they found out my ma was from Puerto Rico. Having lived in mixed neighborhoods prior I had never seen anything like this.
Despite things getting better, me and my sister begged our father to transfer us to the local Catholic school, where most kids on our block went. So he finally did.
There I got flack for where my mother was from. Being of PR background wasn't exactly welcome in Italian neighborhoods back in the 70s.
This lasted for a few years, but ended well before graduation. Thing is, in both schools, it was just name calling. Not bullying, not physical. When I saw that stuff in movies on the big screen or in the ABC Afterschool Special, I thought it was bs. It was only in the 90s that I considered that this stuff could happen for real.
When my pa was looking for a house, there's was a nice one up in Westchester directly across the street from a big pond in a park. That would have been a dream come true for me. How I wished we moved there instead, not having to deal with what I got here.
But the fact is, if we did, I'd most likely have gotten a crap ton of shit in school, far worse than what I had here. Yeah, folks can be prejudiced here, but fact is that the burbs and outwards is where these kids gang up like psychos (they're wusses alone) and get away with it.
That Croatian girl's family, having gone through that war, coming here for a better life, only to lose a child because of septic tank snorting trash, friggin horrible. We have a large population from the Balkans here in the Bronx. No one dares mess with them because they will gather up if need be and stomp faces into the ground. Shame they didn't settle here.