Last Saturday night a 17 year old boy was murdered 3 houses from mine. I don't know all the details but everything points to it being caused by a kid making an honest mistake on Facebook. Our neighbors' teenage son was left home alone with permission to invite 4 specific friends (including his cousin) over to watch movies and hang out. Well the kid made the mistake of posting the invites to those friends on their walls instead of messaging them. Other people saw the message and the boy and his friends, for lack of a better description, were invaded by over 100 teenagers/young adults looking for a house party. The boy was afraid to call the cops because he thought he'd be the one to get arrested. When his cousin (who was supposed to be there) tried to order people to leave, someone decided they didn't want to, and knifed him. All because of improper use of Facebook and people thinking they had the right to invade a 'party'.
But this is another case where I partially blame the neighbors. Supposedly, the kid asked a neighbor for help, and he refused, not wanting to get involved. How hard would it be to call the cops from your living room? Just like a few years ago, when my street almost blew up because of a major gas leak. My neighbors told me later that they'd been smelling gas for days. Within minutes of me smelling it, I was on the phone to the gas company. Its not that hard to make a phone call and once the officials show up, you can back quietly out of the picture.
Ida
