Filmmaker hoping to steer youth away from violence By Elliott Jones elliott.jones@scripps 772-978-2224 FORT PIERCE — An audience of 350 middle school boys went silent during a movie about gun violence — a story that played out in real life in their neighborhood 10 blocks away, 15 hours later. At 1:24 a.m. Tuesday, a man was injured by gunfire in the 1300 block of North 17th Street, the latest in a string of shooting incidents this year, principally in the city’s northwest neighborhoods. Before then, the middle school students watched a film brought in by Boy Scout Troop 772 Executive Scout Master Scott J VanDuzer, who set up the troop in December to help steer some Dan McCarty Middle School students away from violence. The film depicted the role Boy Scouts could play in helping youths in violence-prone neighborhoods. It was a scripted, made-up story, but based on the real-life experiences of filmmaker Patrick Ricks, 29, of Richmond, Virginia. “The troop is doing what the movie is about,” said Ricks, who watched the students’ reactions during the Monday morning showing at the middle school. He saw students turning and whispering to each other during a scene about a youth getting caught up in shoplifting food from a store. There was absolute silence during the depiction of a fatal shooting. After the film ended, about 70 students, in sixth and seventh grades, signed up for the troop, which, beforehand, had about 20 Scouts. Van Duzer expects about half of the 30 will end up completing the full applications. Still, “We’re going to have to figure out how to handle all this,” he said of the volunteer-run troop. He wants to take the troop to a summer camp this summer in South Florida to give them more to do when school is out of session. Sitting in on the film was Fort Pierce Police Chief Sean Baldwin who wants the film shown to the community in August at the Sunrise Theatre. “The biggest thing,” Van Duzer said, “is helping these kids handle real-life situations, to not get into confrontations.”
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 09:38:01 +0000
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