Bloodshed returns to Medellin

[Judi Lynn]

Bloodshed returns to Medellin
By Nadja Drost - GlobalPost
Published: May 20, 2010 06:23 ET

http://www.globalpost.com.nyud.net:8090/sites/default/files/imagecache/torso/photos/215/Colombia-Medellin-violence-2010-05-11-2.jpg

Soldiers patrol the violent Comuna 13
neighborhood in Medellin, Sept. 18, 2009.
(Albeiro Lopera/Reuters)

MEDELLIN, Colombia — Even the prescience of 13-year-old Luis Serna Varela couldn't save him.

He worried he would find himself caught in a shootout, or even with his finger pressed to the trigger of a gun, just another teenager unable to escape the gang warfare in his poor neighborhood atop Medellin. He asked his mother one morning: "Why don’t we leave from here?”

Now it's too late for his mother to do more than wonder about what she could have done differently. Luis went to buy eggs and cheese for his family’s breakfast in January when he was killed by a stray bullet.

He is yet another homicide victim in a city where 10 year olds carry guns and where the police's "necro-mobile" patrols the streets nightly, collecting dead bodies.

More:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/colombia/100331/medellin-violence-part-1