MEMPHIS, Tenn. — When two students left Northeast Prep Academy Wednesday, they didn’t know what was in store: one becoming a crime victim and the other now in the juvenile system.
“I guess right here on North Main the incident happened about the robbery of a child,” bus rider Cynthia Bailey said.
Police said the suspect, 14, stole a cell phone from a classmate and punched him in the eye and ran off right in front of the North Main Police precinct around 4 p.m. Wednesday.
“There is no respect for authority for a lot of the youth. There is no sense of life. It doesn’t mean a lot,” Memphis native Sherry Simmons Coleman said.
Police said the teenage suspect usually takes a bus every day around 5 p.m.
“It has been problems with school children here,” Bailey said.
She said MATA security often has to respond to these types of incidents, as the downtown bus station is attached to the police precinct.
“The security guards have to tell them to leave the premises or get on their buses to make it comfortable for riders,” she said.
Simmons-Coleman said she didn’t feel any sympathy.
“I grew up in the projects of Memphis in Foote homes. But I knew right from wrong. But that would’ve been something I would not have done in that day in age,” she said.
Police say the 14-year-old suspect is now in the custody of the juvenile court system.
