UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS / PART 3 : WITNESS TO RAGE : THE YOUNG : ‘People were looting right on the corner. It was scary.’

When everything started happening Wednesday night, I was in my house. I was just seeing the news and I was scared. There was this fire behind my house and it was burning. And when you know the fires are burning real close to you, you can’t sleep well. The rest of my family was worried too, ‘cause if a fire gets close, then we might have to go hurry up and evacuate our house.

And people were looting right there on the corner thrift store. It was scary ‘cause police were on their bikes, and all those sirens . . . When I saw people looting, I knew it wasn’t right. I thought that they shouldn’t have looted.

I didn’t feel better at all until Friday, when I heard the National Guards were coming. And the curfew. So that made me feel a little bit better. I talked to my mom and dad a lot about it. They said that everything was going to be cleaned up.

We devoted a whole day in school about this. We talked about it. It helped. The teacher made us draw pictures about the riots. I drew people looting ‘cause that was the main thing.

I feel I can trust the police, but I don’t trust this area ‘cause people are still angry. I think because of the verdict. But it’s scary, ‘cause you don’t know. You’re probably just going to school and--might get shot or something.

I would like to move to some clean place. Far from here. Right here is terrible. There’s no more stores or anything. It’s wrong. Because this is where we live, this is where we’re supposed to get our food and everything. It’s not fair.

I used to feel real safe . . . like nothing ever happened. You could go anywhere. But now it’s more dangerous.

I was thinking: Why did it have to be here? ‘Cause mostly nothing ever happened around here.