MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Parents are on edge after children were almost kidnapped, held at gunpoint and raped on their way to or from school.
Now neighborhoods are devising plans to fight back as police step up patrols.
Laverne Tyms escorted her kids out of school and right into her car.
She took no chances after hearing a student was held at gunpoint and sexually assaulted in an abandoned home on Radford on her way home from school.
Not to mention, a father claimed a woman tried to snatch his child while they were walking to Treadwell Elementary, and a 12-year-old girl claims a man with his pants pulled down tried to grab her off of Pope Street.
“It’s good from someone to be on the lookout for another person’s child. It could be your child,” Tyms said. “We need them to be safe. If that means the principals, teachers, police and neighborhoods have to get involved then so be it.”
Other parents say there needs to be a permanent safety plan.
“They really need to have some kind of neighborhood meeting to figure out what’d to be done,” said Robert “Geronimo” Pegues.
“We have enough people in this community to watch every school,” said Stevie Moore.
Moore is with F.F.U.N., an organization that works to stop the violence in the Mid-South.
He says in the past he got a group together that would stand outside schools and keep an eye on children as they walked home. Moore says it helped stop kids from getting into trouble.
“It only takes 35 to 45 minutes. When school lets out, that’s where the biggest problem is,” Moore said.
Parents we talked to say they would be happy to meet with school officials and neighborhood watches to come up with a safety plan.
