Running From Harlem's Future

Two weeks ago in Harlem, around 8 p.m., four black and brown kids allegedly ran down John Broderick Hehman, a white NYU student, looking to jump him for his cell phone. During the chase, one of the teens supposedly yelled, "Get the white boy." Another managed to grab Hehman, while yet another punched him in the head. Finally managing to break loose, Hehman fled towards the subway on Lexington Avenue and 125th street. But the group of teens allegedly cornered him, prompting Hehman to sprint into the street where he was immediately run over by a Mercedes passing through the intersection. Hehman died four days later from massive head injuries. On Monday, April 10th, the police had the four in custody announcing that three of them had made confessions.

Predictably, Al Sharpton, indignant over the media labeling the accused, aged 13 to 15, as "jackals" and a "wolf pack," has joined fray. "If they are guilty, they should face the system," Sharpton declared last Saturday. "But we didn't call people 'wolf packs' in Howard Beach last year or 19 years ago." Back in the present, some are calling for the group to be tried as adults and charged with a hate crime.

Everyone seems to be ignoring the easier comparison to the Central Park jogger incident in '89. A 29 year-old white investment banker jogging through the park in the early hours of the morning got raped and beaten into a coma. The cops rounded up five Harlem kids, aged 14 to 15, and after hours of questioning, got them to confess to the heinous crime. They were "wilding," all the papers charged, and these teens became icons of the savage violence that coursed through the city during the height of the crack epidemic. Maybe the comparison's not being made because 13 years later, the city found out the kids didn't do it. There's no telling where this will go. But what's certain is that John Broderick Hehman is dead, and that is not fair.