Tag Archives: Caprock High School

local news

A new day might bring a new era

As I write these few words, we’re about 15 hours or so from sunrise on a new day in the Texas Panhandle.

We intend to mark the day in a way I never thought would occur. We’re going to Ellwood Park sometime Saturday morning, look for a place to park our car and we’re going to visit with what I hope is a large crowd of marchers.

I’m not sure I intend to actually join the March For Our Lives. I do intend to bring my notebook, a pen and that trusty camera on my cell phone. I intend to talk to young people, some of their parents and perhaps an onlooker or two (or three) to get a sense of what they hope to accomplish.

The March For Our Lives is a national event that has washed over Amarillo. Caprock High School students are taking the lead on organizing the local event; they have the support of their teachers and, I’ll presume, their parents.

It’s not too much of a stretch to wonder if this march portends a new era, whether it signals an awakening among young students who feel endangered by the threat of gun violence.

By now you know that the March For Our Lives was spurred by the slaughter of 17 students and staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The students are outraged, enraged and, yes, frightened. To their huge credit, they aren’t letting their fear overcome them. Many of these Douglas High School students are going to march on Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, their high school-age brethren are marching in streets throughout the country. I saw a map on TV showing communities where March For Our Lives is staging demonstrations; the map was covered with dots denoting such activity.

The students here who’ve taken up this cudgel deserve high praise. I intend to offer it to those I meet.

Amarillo will join the nationwide march. We’ll need to get there early enough to find some parking near Ellwood Park.

I’m looking forward to the new day. May it signal an awakening.

local news

Tragedy hands Amarillo PD a PR gem

The Amarillo Police Department has been handed a solid-gold public relations opportunity that has been born out of a tragic incident on a city street.

James Sutton was killed Friday night near Caprock High School, apparently while drag-racing along 34th Avenue. He lost control of his vehicle and flipped it several times. The 24-year-old motorist was pronounced dead on the scene. Police say he was racing two other vehicle when his SUV struck a curb and flipped. APD is looking for the drivers of the other vehicles.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/28896242/one-dead-after-wreck-near-school

A young man’s family is grieving over this senseless loss.

Senseless because the young man was doing something that has killed many other drivers over many years — perhaps since the invention of the automobile.

Street-racing is among any American city or town’s dirty little secrets. It’s underreported, yet it goes on virtually every night in cities across the country. Young drivers think they’re invincible to begin with, so they test their invincibility by challenging other young drivers to do something that is quite illegal, which is drive way past the posted speed limit recklessly, putting themselves and others in extreme danger.

Can there be a better tool to use in a campaign to dissuade young drivers from engaging in this kind of fearful behavior?

There now exists at Amarillo City Hall and in the city’s police department an opportunity to send a message throughout this city — and perhaps even far beyond the city — about the dangers of street racing.

Man, oh, man. It kills!