Right place...right time

Back in early May, I made a quick run to Walmart with Daivney while BJ was working. I was in a crazy hurry, the kind of hurry when you are flying down the aisles just doing a quick grab at whatever item you need and flying off to the next aisle. Not paying any attention to anyone around you, and just trying to get in and out as fast as possible. I also try to be so quick when I get groceries at Walmart because by the time I get all the cold stuff and am done standing in line, the cold stuff isn't so cold anymore. So it ends up being a race through walmart to get everything in the cart and paid for and out of the store back home into the fridge before it gets too warm. Well this day in particular evidently God didn't want me rushing. He had better plans.
I had all my groceries stocked up underneath Daivney's car seat that was balancing on the cart. We were in line. Two women were ahead of us but they didn't have hardly anything in their cart, so I figured PERFECT! We'll be out of here in no time! Uh..or not. The women in front of me looked friendly, blond hair, smiley, a little shorter than me. She turned around and started talking to Daivney...and of course Daivney being the super social little girl she is did her baby talk back to this woman. I never got this woman's name, so for the sake of my story we'll call her Sue. Well Sue continued to talk with Daivney, which lead to talking with me. She asked me questions about Daivney and then started talking about her own child. She went into a story of how her boy is in Middle School and is have a lot of problems. In my head I was like 'oh good grief! I don't have time for this!'. But I kept the smile on my face and asked her what kind of problems. She went on to tell me how she has had to take him out of the school system he was in out here and put him in a different one. They live in a town that must be right on the county line, so the kids have a choice to go to one school in one county, or another school in another. She had to switch him from the one to the other...which she thought would be better for him. He was having a lot of problems at the first school like kids making fun of him, being bullied, poked fun of, etc. So this new school she put him in she thought would be better for him. Sue told me that her ex husband is a cop in the county, so she really didn't think that he would have problems at this other school. She also said that her boy didn't have a big mouth to get all this bad attention for either. Well nothing changed when she put him in this new school. Sue contacted the school system to tell them about her son coming home and the stories he was telling her. They took no action. Sue asked her son's teachers to keep an eye on him during school hours because she was scared for him by what he was telling her. They did nothing. She told me at that time that if it continued she would take him out of school and home school him. She said it would put them in financial trouble, but if it meant helping her son she would do it.
By this point Sue had all of her groceries in bags and in her cart ready to head out to her car, and I was loading my groceries on the runner. I had listened to her story, and gave her smiles, and head nods, and told her how I couldn't believe how bad the boys were to her son in school. After he really didn't seem to deserve any of it! As I think back on it now, we never said goodbye....she just paid for her things, and I continued with mine. And that was that.
This past week, I was watching the local news, and I caught an update that they were showing on a boy that had been killed by a gang. My heart dropped, and because I didn't catch the whole update, I went straight to the net and looked it up. The first picture they showed was this young young boy with a baseball cap on. Totally innocent looking. Then I continued to read the story and it talked about how the boy was sitting on his bike, and a fight broke out with the kids around him, and another boy struck this young boys' head so hard it killed him. My jaw dropped....the other details I read had to do with the mother trying to sue the school system. Everything seemed so familiar, so I looked at the other pictures they had posted on the site. I couldn't believe it, there she was. It was Sue. The woman I had met back in Walmart. Her son was killed on May 30, 2008. He had done nothing wrong, just an innocent boy in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There are so many gangs around here, and the ages of the kids keep getting younger. Sue's son was killed by a middle school gang. My heart still drops when I think of her. She was trying to do everything she could to keep her son safe....the last step was to take him out of school. I'm sure she didn't realize that it would ever get to the point it did. But she was scared for him.
I wonder if she remembers talking with me? Her story that she told me at Walmart made an impact on me. And maybe God had me there at that time, at that place, to listen to Sue, so that just one more person would be praying for her during this time of heartache. She's in my thoughts and prayers.