3:17 AM OUT FOR A STROLL...DECENT KIDS..HMMMMMM!!!

Precisely!!!!! ...

In fact , I did not even get past the words:

"According to Prince George RCMP, three 14 year olds were on their way to the convenience store in the Victoria Street -20th Avenue area about 3:17 Saturday morning."

Where were the parents?

"Police say there were several people standing around watching the attack"

getting the story one peice at a time.

I assume at least one of them had a cell and dialed 911 and thus we have the time as exact as 3:17am .... ????

Does it matter what time they were out? When I was growing up I had a lot of freedom and sometimes I would be out at the early hours of the morning. It's no reason for someone to be assaulted.

Exactly what were these 14 year olds doing out at 3:17 am?
The sooner we make parents responsible for their kids,the better off we will all be!
Rap a few parents for their lack of responsibilty and things will start to change fast!!
oh wait...what am I thinking...that is too logical to ever happen!

Kids also tend to sneak out. Hope this boy pulls through.

Get real,

it is one thing to be responsible for your children, and it is another to keep track of their comings and goings. We as a society are charged with certain standards, and one of them should be that we live in a reasonably safe community.

I don`t have any answers, but this kids life is hanging in the balance.

My prayers are with him.

Agreed....where are the parents?
Agreed....kids probably shouldn't be out wandering downtown streets at 3am;
BUT, so what....the issue here is how other people can be so cruel and heartless to beat someone up like that. Don't get distracted by arguing about "where are the parents?", because then it sounds as if you don't give a hoot about a human being being almost killed by other human beings. I get the feeling some of you want to almost justify this by saying...'well yes, but it's JUST a punk kid who shouldn't have been out at that time of night'...almost like he was a piece of garbage and therefore we shouldn't care as much.

It is everyones responsibility to educate children of the dangers in there neighborhood, this would include parents, other family members,neighbors, friends, teachers.
Teenagers really shouldn't be walking around at night, it is just to dangerous, especially when the community has past violence.
What is that lower part of town called ? oh yeah, " The Hood "
I hope the youth in hospital will recover .

Where are the parents, I like that one. What can the parents do these days, nothing, nothing at all. Feel good society has taken all control of kids away from parents. Kids can get pills from school without the parents knowing. Get mad at your kid, they will call the kid abuse hotline. Society these days are more concerned about your dog riding in the back of a pickup than disciplining kids.

seamutt DOES have a valid point!

When I was a teenager, I used to get up at 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. to go for a walk, because I loved the early morning hour. Fortunately, I lived in a small town and was relatively safe. I don't consider myself to be deserving of an almost-fatal beating, do you? Kids do stupid things -- it's part of being young, but that doesn't mean they should be fair game for any moron out there with a chip on his shoulder!

Quite right Chilliwack.
Nobody deserves what happened to this kid and I hope he pulls thorugh ok,but let's be honest,that is not a good time for kids or anyone else to be roaming the streets at that hour of the morning.
Especially in that end of town!
The world is a much different place than it was when we were growing up,sad but true.

Not to further victimize the victim, but is it possible that this youth was up to no good just prior to being beaten? Could it be that a frustrated homeowner finally was at wits end and took the law into their own hands after having their property being subjected to a band of maurauding youths?

I'm not saying this is the case, but its a theory that deserves to be put out there......

Par for the course in that part of town. Only thing unusual in this is that a kids life now hangs in the ballance.

I remember after a Mike Tyson fight night at a bar called Champs in Chilliwack some of the locals went just nuts in a frenzy and just started attacking people outside at random. I was lucky that I was with some big PG boys and we chased them off before they could hurt anyone else. It was just random violence by some punks that got all worked up and spilled over their violence on random people that just happened to be in the wrong spot. I suspect the same thing happened here as a pior fight at a house party was mentioned.

IMO there is no excuse for that kind of violence, nor the kind of people that stand by and watch it. Those are the type that should recieve the harshest sentence.

Gee whiz! When I was 14, a thousand years ago, my parents wouldn't let me out during these hours. I was home snug in my bed. I sure din't get beat up and was near death. That is why I can sit here quite comfy and write this. My! How times and parents have changed. "We don't need no stinkin' rules!"

By the way. Why not pass a law or two? That oughta fix things and perpetrators!

I have raised several kids and thank God they all lived to grow up. I had one son that was about 19 when he got a real licken as he was walking home rather than drinking and driving. A decent and smart kid and he wasn't even in a bad neighborhood...I guess maybe he was just walking on the wrong side of the street? None of my kids were out at that hour when they were 14 years old however. I don't know what the circumstances are with these boys but one is close to death and what a shame that is, I hope he pulls through. I do have to ask the same question as a few others here though and that is, where are the parents of these kids?

Quite a number of years ago in the same neibourhood a number of juveniles were badly beaten in an alley. Rumour at the time was that the men in the neibourhood were sick and tired of these people harassing their famlies and generally causing all kinds of problems, so they did something about it.

I understand that the problem level had a decided drop after that. No charges were ever laid to my knowledge.

Dont know if this is the same sort of vigilante mentality, however it is in the same area.

I just want to make sure I'm reading some of the posts here correctly. What I'm getting is:

Good people have no excuse for being out at 3 in the morning. There is no acceptable reason for a fourteen year old to be walking to a convenience store at that hour. If you are out at 3am, you're obviously up to no good and deserve whatever you get.

All good people should barricade themselves in their homes, safe and sound in their beds, until 6am. Between midnight and 6 the police should abdicate any sort of authority and should allow the gangs (vigilante and otherwise) to roam free to mete out whatever punishment they see fit.

Did I miss anything?

It's been a lot of years since I was 14 but I do remember the nights my buddy's and I would be out at 3am. It was a rite of passage in the early 80's.

Where were my parents? They knew we were out there but they also trusted us because we'd proven that we weren't going to burn anything down, steal anything and would still make it home in the morning.

The freedom I experienced at 14 is a large part of why I'm a healthy and well adjusted person now and not someone that is afraid of their own shadow.

The pity isn't that some parent allowed their child out at 3am. The true crime here is that we've allowed parts of our city to become so unsafe that it's considered unsurprising that a child would be beaten so bad he had to be flown to Vancouver.

Lots of gangbangers in that area during the wee hrs of the morning. Any kind of street smart youth out at 3:00am on those streets should have known that. It's no excuse for what happened to the lad, but smarten up!

This issue is a sad commentary on our society as a whole. The kind of beating this kid apparently received was probably not called for, although it does sound like a great deal of passion was involved. By that I mean alcohol or illicit drug fueled rage, or the kid(s) committed a crime or insult against the beater, either way, the beater must be a psychopath.
metalman.

Please don't judge these parents too harshly. I have a 25 year old son who, when he was 14, (and 6 feet tall, 180 pounds) walked out the door after telling us he hated us and he hoped that we would both die. We called the police and they said they would keep an eye out for him but the reality is that there was little they could do. We drove around, phoned all his friends, did everything we could think of but he came home when he was good and ready. We struggled through almost 6 months of this behaviour. Eventually, he settled down and, with help from the school and counsellors, has been wonderful ever since. This is not an uncommon story. I've talked to many other loving, caring parents who have had similar experiences with their teenagers - boys especially. My son is now 25 years old and shudders when he looks back at that time of his life. He is now a smart, decent, educated man who went through a really tough time when he was young. During that time he was, temporarily, out of our control. I don't know what we could have done, beyond handcuffing him to his bed, to keep him home. We took every privilege away but he didn't care about anything. Please don't be too harsh on the parents - many are doing their best in really trying circumstances. My heart goes out to them and the young man so severely hurt.

Seems this turned out to be a stabbing, rather than a beating. In either case it is unacceptable.

I dont have the answers for the increased violence, robberys, etc; in this town.

It seems like people do basically whatever they wish with little or no concern about the law.

It may very well be time for our politicians to spend some time on crime control, and quit working so hard for the Developers, and Real Estate business. It doenst make much sense to be trying to build all the facilities for a City, when no one dares to go downtown after dark because they will get robbed or killed.

Rarely do we hear from City Hall on these issues, other than at year end when they throw out a bunch of statistics. We have Cities in the past that ignored this type of problem a their peril, and at the end of the day basically lost control of the City., and had to start over from the beginning. Are we going to wait also, or will our elected officials sit down with the RCMP, Fire Department, Bylaw Enforcement Officers, and start to enforce the laws and regulations that are on the books.

We all know as an example that people totally disregard the Helmet laws, and nothing is done about it. What it actually does is send a message that laws can be disregarded. Same thing applies to speeding. Any citizen on any given day can spot hundreds of speeders, but you rarely see them pulled over by the Police. Instead you see the Police using radar to give out tickets for speeding and seatbelts. Is this to generate money?

People who are excessively speeding and endangering lives should be pulled over ticketed and charged. In a very short time speeding would slow down.

We have to start using our resources for what they were originally set up for.

The bottom line is that three teenagers have been beaten and stabbed by a bunch of losers and cowards. This area of town is filled with drucken bumbs and losers prowling the streets looking for trouble. Yet just around the corner is the RCMP office!!!? So my question is to the witnesses who supposedly watch these kids get beaten and stabbed. Why the hell did nobody jump in and protect these guys, or band together and help them? How do you live with yourself knowing you did nothing? I personally would have jumped in and tried to protect them as would most normal people. And yes, it is easy to say, because it is true. I served in Rwanda and Bosnia, and beleive me, these Yahoos would have been running for their own lives. Shame on you for not helping.

Please don't judge these parents too harshly. I have a 25 year old son who, when he was 14, (and 6 feet tall, 180 pounds) walked out the door after telling us he hated us and he hoped that we would both die. We called the police and they said they would keep an eye out for him but the reality is that there was little they could do. We drove around, phoned all his friends, did everything we could think of but he came home when he was good and ready. We struggled through almost 6 months of this behaviour. Eventually, he settled down and, with help from the school and counsellors, has been wonderful ever since. This is not an uncommon story. I've talked to many other loving, caring parents who have had similar experiences with their teenagers - boys especially. My son is now 25 years old and shudders when he looks back at that time of his life. He is now a smart, decent, educated man who went through a really tough time when he was young. During that time he was, temporarily, out of our control. I don't know what we could have done, beyond handcuffing him to his bed, to keep him home. We took every privilege away but he didn't care about anything. Please don't be too harsh on the parents - many are doing their best in really trying circumstances. My heart goes out to them and the young man so severely hurt.

Oops - sorry for the double post. not sure what happened there ...?

tiemens love your posting and it's something everybody should think about.

The police cannot be everywhere at all times. Due to the lack of resources ( $$) there will never be enough police around to prevent things like this happening.