MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A watchful neighbor caught a group of kids as they broke into an elderly man’s home.
Gene Street considers himself the Neighborhood Watch of sorts on his Frayser block. Recently, back on April 6, Street and his wife noticed something strange going on at the house across from their home.
“My wife seen it on our cameras and was like, ‘Gene. There is somebody over there.”
It turned out to be about four to five kids. Police say they were in the process of breaking into a side window of his 81-year-old neighbor’s home, who was inside with a caretaker at the time.
Street yelled at the group as soon as he saw them.
“They ripped the screen, pulled open the window and was holding the guy inside pulling stuff out,” he said. “They took off running, and I grabbed the one they were holding in the window by his feet. The one that stopped, he actually tried to hit me, and I dodged his punch and held him down.”
Police arrived shortly after that.
“He looked like he was about 16 or 17, but he actually was only 12-years-old.”
It’s cases like this that Stevie Moore with Freedom From Unnecessary Negatives works to prevent. He spreads his message of anti-violence and pushes positivity and the importance of education. He’s planning a meeting before this summer with the goal to help devise plans to keep children out of trouble.
“I’m gonna call a meeting with all the players, the community leaders and we definitely gotta have the clergy. We got enough churches to almost solve this problem,” Moore said.
A date has not yet been set for that meeting.
It’s unclear if the other children were caught and charged.