Gunfight at the OK Corral

Well maybe not quite, but how about machetes and baseball bats at Merrylands High School.

Five teenage boys, armed with baseball bats and machetes, paid a visit to the school yesterday morning during assembly, and went on a rampage that left a teacher and two students in hospital and 16 others injured plus thousands of dollars worth of damage. The intruders entered two of the school buildings, running through corridors and smashing as many windows as they could. Broken glass showered students huddled in the classrooms, leaving some with cuts and abrasions. Police arrived at the school within minutes and confronted the boys, who did not resist arrest.

Students who witnessed the invasion said:

“They said they were looking for some kid, and teachers made an announcement and rushed us into classrooms and locked us in,”

“I saw a lot of punching and kicking and bashing,”

Ambulance NSW said a total of 18 students had required treatment for “minor injuries, some lacerations, some bruising”.

One student said the gang was made up of students from neighbouring Granville Boys High School who were looking for a boy who was not at school yesterday. He did not know why they wanted the boy. Former students from the school claimed there had been tensions between the school’s Pacific Islander students and other student groups for many years. Police said the boys had come to the school seeking retribution for a perceived slight.

The gang comprised two 14-year-old boys from Carramar and Auburn, two 15-year-old boys from Merrylands and Seven Hills and a 16-year-old boy from Merrylands. Each has been charged with

• One count of destroying or damaging property worth more than $15,000.
• One count of affray.
• One count of assaulting a school staff member occasioning actual bodily harm.
• Two counts of assaulting a school staff member while attending school.
• Seven counts of assaulting school students occasioning actual bodily harm.
• Seven counts of assaulting school students while attending school.
• One count of participating in a criminal group.

One of the 15-year-olds arrested was on bail over charges relating to two armed robberies last Wednesday.

The questions I’d ask about this include:

• what sort of people go armed with baseball bats and machetes to settle a petty schoolboy grudge?
• why do people get bailed for armed robberies? I mean they are a fairly significant level of thug and public menace if they’re doing that, so why let them out on bail …. no doubt the kid has a criminal record as long as his arm
• what are they, Americans or something? I mean whats with baseball bats …. the Australian thing would be cricket bats (which I imagine would hurt more too, due to having corners unlike a baseball bat which is round).

I reckon these boys should get some serious punishment over this, like 5 years jail or more. There have been more than one of these types of incidents – including one here in Canberra this year. Harsh punishment is needed to serve as an example that settling schoolyard squabbles with extraordinary and indiscriminate violence is completely unacceptable. No doubt however, when they get to court they’ll bring up how their upbringing was tough and that their behaviour flows from that and is an inevitable consequence beyond their control … and end up getting a 6 months good behaviour bond or something like that. (These arguments about people committing crimes due to their childhood or family situation should carry no weight in court …. they are just bullshit – everyone, no matter how difficult things have been for them, has choices about being a decent citizen or not, and if they make the choice to commit crimes they deserve to suffer severe consequences – its 100% their own responsibility.)

I suppose at least we should be grateful that this is not the USA with its lax gun laws. Rather than baseball bats and machetes there’s a fair chance someone would have used a gun to settle their scores …. but obviously the weekly school shootings there are acceptable to the people – if not surely they’d bring their gun laws into step with the rest of the western world.