I was taken aback momentarily but came to my senses. “Call 911!” I yelled. Not one person responded. “Come on! Somebody has a cell phone! We need to call for help!” Again I was ignored and the class began about its business as Mr. Fosse lay on the floor bleeding. “Help me, please,” Mr. Fosse managed to verbalize, begging for help. Everyone in the class carried on andTamika sat back down and could be heard screeching, “He put his hands on me! He touched me!” No one bothered to help the man as he lay dying on the floor. Everyone watched with indifference. Nobody cared, except me it seemed. The nurse, I knew, was on the second floor of the building, if she was in. I got up from my desk and ran out of the class into the hall. I turned right around a corner to a stair well, ran up the steps to the second floor and burst into the first room on the right.Ms. Negron, a school counselor stood there in the middle of the office, speaking with Mrs. Almyer, the nurse. I’ve had a crush on Ms. Negron since ninth grade; all the boys did. She was a gorgeous Latina woman with a nice figure and wore thin framed glasses. “What’s wrong?” Ms. Negron asked. “Tamika Simmons! She stabbed Mr. Fosse in the neck!” I said. “He’s on the floor bleeding!” “What room is he in?” Mrs. Almyer asked.“Room 103,” I said. As the three of us raced down the flight of stairs, Ms. Negron called 911. The police and an ambulance were on the way.Back on the first floor, Mrs. Almyer prevented Ms. Negron and me from entering the classroom. “Stay out here,” she said. “I don’t want to cause too much commotion in the class and make sure Tamika doesn’t leave.” Shockingly Tamika had not skipped the scene; her arrogance and stupidity caused her to believe she had the right to do what she did. Mrs. Almyer went into the class and shut the door behind her. I watched through the window; Mr. Fosse lay on the floor motionless. Ms. Negron and I stepped about fifteen feet away from the door. “Rodolfo, explain to me what happened,” she asked as we stood in the empty hall.I explained how Tony threw up gang signs and wrote on the blackboard. How Tamika and Darnell were making out and when Mr. Fosse physically broke them up, Tamika went nuts and shanked him in the neck. Ms. Negron listened, clutching her red purse as her brown eyes became watery. “I knew it,” she said softly. “I knew that this would ultimately happen. They would kill one of us in the end.”She had a point. Events at school could cause one to believe that a teacher’s eventual murder be caused by a student. Julio Rodriguez punched Mr. Klooney, an English teacher, in the gut. Mr. Shoemaker was struck in the jaw last year by Jimmy Burton. And last semester, crazy Sean Ferrister hit Mr. Cavallero, the music teacher, with a chair. He even threatened to come to school and shoot some of his street rivals, other drug dealers and gang members.I continued, explaining that no on in the room tried to help him, except for me. I told her how they didn’t care that a man lay there was dying. At that moment the classroom door opened and strutting out with Darnell at her side was Tamika. “That’s her,” I whispered to Ms. Negron, “She’s the one who stabbed Mr. Fosse.” Immediately, Ms. Negron pulled a small silver gun from her purse, a silencer at its tip. She pulled the trigger and let three rounds in Tamika’s stomach. Before Darnell could flee Ms. Negron gave him two in the chest. Both of them fell dead on the hard hallway floor. I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say or do but I wasn’t scared. The door opened again and Tony walked out wearing his white wife beater, showing off his tattooed arms and neck. He immediately saw the two bodies on the hall floor. “What the f**k?” he said. Before you knew it, Ms. Negron shot him twice in the gut. He fell on the floor near Tamika and Darnell but kept moving. She shot him one more time for good measure.“Antonio Sanchez,” Ms. Negron said under her breath. “If there is ever a drug deal on the street corner you could find him there. How many lives has he helped ruin? How many were babies born addicted to crack because of him?” Just then Mrs. Almyer walked out of the class room crying, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Mr. Fosse is dead,” she said, voice trembling. Ms. Negron concealed the gun before Mrs. Almyer could notice.“Oh God!” Mrs. Almyer screamed. “What happened? Who did this?” she said referring to dead bodies on the floor.“Sean Ferrister!” I responded instantly. “He shot them! Sean came in here and shot them like he said he would! “He ran down the hall towards the east side of the building!” Ms. Negron added.Ms. Negron called 911 again to report the crimes committed by crazy Sean Ferrister. Soon after, the authorities arrived, removed the bodies and asked all kinds of questions. The other students in the class and I testified that Tamika stabbed Mr. Fosie. None of them saw what happened out in the hall. Ms. Negron and I corroborated each other’s story that Sean was responsible for the student’s deaths. He managed to enter the school somehow through as side door. Ms. Negron and I saw him coming down the hall wielding a gun so we hid around the corner that led to the stairwell upstairs. When Sean’s targets came out of the class he took them out and fled the scene.Turns out Sean Ferrister shot and killed two people during a drug deal gone sour later that same night. It looked like a killing spree. He was caught and charged with five counts of murder.That horrific event went down as statistical, urban high school violence. I never went to summer school after that and graduated the next year. Eventually I finished college and got a job as an engineer. Ms. Negron left West High soon after the ordeal. I was told she moved to Puerto Rico but haven’t heard anything about her since. That was fourteen years ago. Wherever Ms. Negron is I hope she’s in a place where she doesn’t have to carry a gun in her purse. END
