Being A Quiet Bystander

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A few years ago when I was a sophomore in high school I overheard some students in the cafeteria talking about how one of their friends murdered a kid who lives a few towns away from me as part of a gang initiation. I never told anyone because I was afraid that I might get into trouble with the police, get sued for something, or that the gang might come after me. I felt a little bad about not telling anyone, but I figured that the police already knew more than I did and I couldn't give them any names or much other information anyways. I would have been more likely to tell someone if they had said that they knew someone who was going to murder someone. Then again, maybe not because it would probably create trouble for me and I'm less likely to get into any trouble if I just pretend that I never heard anything and no one ever knows that I did. Should I have told someone? How likely would it have been that I would have gotten into trouble with the police, gotten sued for something, or that the gang would have came after me? Maybe I'm just paranoid. I just felt the need to get this off my chest.

That's a heavy load to carry and I can see why you feel torn. Maybe you could make an anonymous tip to the police?

At the time, were you aware that a kid had been found dead in the nearby town? Was a suspicious death of a child publicized?

My opinion is that they were just making it up to impress whoever they were telling. I would think that if they really did know a person who killed somebody, that the person wouldn't tell somebody who was likely to blab it in a school lunch room. I would guess that if someone was going to tell someone else a thing like that, it wouldn't be in a place where anyone could overhear.

If you had told the police, they would have made you tell who you heard say it and who they said it to. They would have gone to them and said someone told them they overheard it and question all of them, and they would deny it. If the kids figured out it was you who told the police, they would be the ones coming after you. Not to kill you or anything, I'm pretty sure, but to make the rest of your high school years horrible.

Again, they probably just made it up, because some kids are impressed by stuff like that. I don't think you should let it worry you. As for hearing them plot a murder, if anyone is stupid enough to plot a murder in a full lunch room at school, they will get caught. You don't even have to say anything. They will get caught.

You have no evidence of anything or a location. Just a very vague hearsay story.

I doubt that's enough for the police to go on unless they happen to already have another case going that corroborates what you say.

I didn't hear anything about a kid being killed a nearby town, but according to someone I know who lives in the ghetto, if someone is killed in the ghetto by gang violence you never see it on the news and not many people know about it because it happens all the time and no one cares. I know people who've witnessed shoot-outs and have scars from where they've been shot. I also know that some of the gangs in the area like to use pit bulls to rip people apart. I live in a nearby town without much gang violence, although there are some drug dealers. I'd consider myself to be somewhere between middle class and upper-middle class. Meeting people who live under those conditions opened my eyes to more of the bad things that go on in the world and in the United States, where I live.

OK. So, if this is true, then anything a high school sophomore would tell the police, second hand, would be ignored. Why stress? Or are you unsure that what your ghetto friend said is actually true?

I think what he said is true. He showed me a scar on his ankle where he claims he got shot during a gang shoot-out and also some scars from when his dad used to put out cigarettes on his face. I don't know how much he knows for sure, but he told me a story about how someone he knew became part of a gang and was going to kill a kid with a pit bull before he stopped him. He also said that he had friends who died from gang violence.