Alexandria City Mayor Justin Wilson, who has a son at Alexandria City High School, released the following statement on Facebook Wednesday morning.
Local high school students are doing asynchronous, virtual learning today following Tuesday afternoon's fight at Bradlee Shopping Center, which resulted in the death of 18-year-old student Luis Mejia Hernandez.
Wilson posted this statement on Facebook (click here to see comments and reactions from local residents on Facebook):
“City leaders say they knew gangs had spread among teenagers in Alexandria and elsewhere. They responded to the threat with education, mentoring and police programs. But these measures fell short, partly because few believed that teenagers whose previous crimes had involved mostly fistfights and graffiti were likely to kill.
"I don't think anybody believed that this would happen here, not at the level that it did," said School Superintendent Herbert Berg. "This is something that principals will be talking about 10 to 15 years from now."
Four years ago, police and school officials created a system for rushing in specially trained youth officers to defuse volatile campus conflicts. But on July 3, those officers were not notified when gang members skirmished outside George Washington in the hours before Ardila's death.”
--The Washington Post (December 15, 1996)
Yesterday, a little after lunch I saw reports that a fight had developed at the Bradlee Shopping Center and a teenager had been stabbed. I immediately checked my phone and verified that my son was in school a block away and not at the shopping center. That was my reaction as a parent.
Yesterday, Luis Mejia Hernandez’s parents lost their son. For as long as they will live, nothing else will ever matter. We grieve with the friends and family who knew Luis well and hope that at some point they will have some peace.
Just like Romulo Eric Ardila over 25 years ago, Luis was stabbed to death near one of Alexandria’s schools in violence that is hard to fathom or explain. Eric Ardila would be 42 today. Luis will be 18 forever.
The last day has been a painful one for our City. Our students, educators, parents and community members have all absorbed this trauma.
Parents and members of our community have used their voices to demand solutions, implemented immediately. That is also my reaction as a parent.
The ideas proposed reflect the diversity of opinion in our City: Residents have demanded more police, more mental health counselors, smaller schools, more robust gang prevention, new training and programs and new procedures for campus operations.
Still others have used this moment to re-litigate political fights of the past, prosecute petty grievances, advance a policy agenda, or accelerate personal vendettas.
As a parent, I see the attraction in the answers that seem expeditious and even the answers that seem petty. But reacting as a policy-maker, I know that if there was an answer that would have guaranteed that Luis would be alive today, we would have done it long ago, probably before Eric was murdered over a quarter-century ago. Kids resort to violence to resolve disputes for multi-faceted and baffling reasons. We cannot and should not expect that complex youth violence will be resolved by a performative social media post and policy “answers” thrown from the hip in the aftermath of an incident.
Alexandria invests more in our kids than most communities on the planet. We know that the welfare and success of our children is one of the most durable legacies of our time. No matter how much we work to equip our children, we will fail some of them. That’s what drives many of us who work to make positive change for our kids. There can be no tolerance for kids slipping through the cracks.
Over 25 years ago, one of Eric Ardila’s friends told the Associated Press “Everybody cares about him when he's dead. When he's alive, only his friends and family cared about him. That's how this world works.''
As the investigation continues, the individual or individuals who ended the life of Luis Hernandez will be brought to justice. I am confident of that.
If we truly want this moment to be one of change, we must care about the next child before they become a victim. We must approach our decisions with humility and a recognition that the most impactful solutions may not be the most obvious. We must turn away from the “easy” answers, and work collaboratively with parents, educators, human-service agencies, non-profits and police to protect our children and equip them to resolve conflict without violence. In doing so, we will not only make them safer, but we will also set an example for them.
