Gunfire in Brooklyn

It was the night before the mid-term algebra exams. Teacher Margaret Jokiel, a pretty blonde of 24, went off to a concert, to relax before the big day. She left her mother alone in the parlor. A little after 9, the phone rang.

Was Margaret there, a small soprano voice asked. Mrs. Jokiel said no. "Well," said the voice, "if she doesn't pass everyone in math tomorrow, she'll soon be pushing up daisies." Mrs. Jokiel, a teacher herself, thought the call was probably a joke. But a few minutes later, gunfire echoed through the quiet Brooklyn street. Bullets zinged through windows, smacked into walls. When the police arrived, they counted 24 bullet holes in the Jokiel house. Neighbors said the shots had come from a darkened car cruising slowly past the house.

Next day, two detectives escorted Teacher Margaret Jokiel to Fort Hamilton High School. She had no idea which of her 165 pupils could have wanted to shoot at her ("They all seem O.K. to me"). After the math exam, the detectives began questioning the kids. One boy could only stammer his answers. Questioned further, he admitted that he had not signed his own name to his test paper: he was taking the examination for a friend.

A few hours later police found the friend -- a scared, black-eyed 14-year-old named Anthony. At first, the boy acted tough ("Get those reporters outta here," he told police. "I don't want no pitchers took"), but gradually it all came out,

He had planned his campaign over sodas at an ice-cream store. With four other kids (none of them Fort Hamilton students), he set out in a stolen car that was loaded with rifles and ammunition he had stolen earlier from a Coney Island shooting gallery. Everything went according to plan. A little after 9 one boy, disguising his voice to sound like a girl's, had phoned Teacher Jokiel. A few minutes later the others drove past the Jokiel house. "Shoot!" Anthony ordered them. "Show you're not chickens." When the shooting was over, the boys abandoned the stolen car, returned to the ice-cream store for more sodas.

Just in case Miss Jokiel hadn't been scared enough, Anthony had persuaded the smartest friend he knew to take the exam in his place (the smart kid got a 43).

Why had he done it? Said Anthony: "I got a zero in the first term. I was afraid to muff this exam. I figured my old man would beat hell outta me."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.