Good citizens are hard to come by in a city beset with crime and injustice, but people who defy convention to do the right thing are rare super heroes.
A round of applause goes to the two Brooklyn mums who hauled off their teen daughters to cops last week, after one recognized them in a wanted photo for the merciless assault of a 78-year-old woman straphanger.
The morally upstanding parents were clearly horrified to learn their offspring allegedly punched and kicked Nora Trotman on a Bedford-Stuyvesant subway platform because she asked them to remove their feet from a seat on a Manhattan-bound C train.
One mum marched her daughter — a 16 year old — into the 75th Precinct station house in East New York to face the music as an adult charged with felony assault. The other mother dragged her spawn — a 15-year-old accomplice — to the 79th Precinct station house in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where she was charged with assault as a juvenile.
Let them both feel the full brunt of the law if found guilty because even pre-schoolers know it’s wrong to kick and punch an old lady. The two pals need to set the record straight, beginning with a sincere apology to Ms. Trotman, who was rushed to the hospital and later identified them in a lineup. A “so sorry for turning out like this” to their long-sufferiung mums wouldn’t hurt either.
Writer Oscar Wilde once said, “Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future,” and the troublesome teens can transform their lives forthwith, as generations of delinquents before them have done:
• Actor Mark Wahlberg was charged at 16 with attempted murder for beating a Vietnamese refugee with a metal hook, leaving the victim blind.
• Dog the Bounty Hunter was an outlaw biker believed to have committed at least 18 armed robberies with his gang.
• “The Wire” actress Felicia “Snoop” Pearson was imprisoned at 14 for killing a girl during a brawl.
Good people taking a stand against wrongdoing reaffirm our societies, and the super-moms prove that ordinary people can rise to extraordinary heights when conscience calls to do the right thing.
None of us are perfect, but all of us are amendable, and the punk pals should spend the rest of their lives being honorable citizens — just like their mothers.
Follow me on Twitter @BritShavana
