Child Day of The Dead Strikes Bakersfield's Maple Street - By N.L. Belardes
I had just arrived home from work when one of my boys received a phone call that there had been an explosion one street over. I didn't have time to even grab a camera. chingpea had a camera phone and we were off to the scene to see what tragedy had struck our immediate community.
A crowd gathers on the corner of Maple Street and Oleander
It seems anything can happen in the Oleander area: a novel about the creepy old Fritts mansion, stories about a possibly unsafe water park, a house fire, a mugging by 15-20 kids attacking 3 boys after a football game, strange break-ins, and now a mysterious explosion striking Maple Street children, killing two of them.
News crew interview...
A police officer arrives to rope off the area
A relative of the homeowner comes up the street
Roped off...
Were they playing with ammunition that got dumped into a fire/barbecue pit? That's what was told to me by the supposed brother of the man who owns the house where the explosion took place. He had come up the street, holding the hand of a crying woman who walked a bike. He appeared in shock. When they neared she was clearly distraught. He explained to me the panic in the home, the violence of the situation and that he didn't know if his brother would be arrested. After I spoke with him, he and the woman wandered south on Oleander...
A man in shock stands next to a distraught woman right before I interview him
The media were on the east and west ends of the street
A family in shock
I then rushed home and uploaded a quick story onto this site and bakotopia.com. The images were trapped in cyberspace until late this evening.
What is he searching for near the roof of a house?
Tonight I went back to the scene to see lights had been set up in the street. Matildakay brought her camera but waited in her car while I walked down Maple Street. Fire engines, police vehicles lined the street while groups of law enforcement stood in nearby yards. A ladder from a large fire engine stretched to the house. What were they searching for? And why did they need a ladder? One firemen stood on the ladder and looked like a shadow amongst the trees. He shined a flashlight in my direction, after which I snapped a photo of his silhouette.
As I walked away, a news van drove onto Maple Street. The driver stared down the road and eventually turned around and drove off...
*Note: an early story claiming one child died was taken offline by the local paper. Another story appeared at a new web location. And suddenly at 11:56 PM, around 10 bottle rockets started going off on Forrest St., nearby to the Maple St. location of the explosion. Was that meant to rattle the cops, the families, or...?
This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on
Tuesday, August 29, 2006.
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that is just total craziness... i feel for all the families of the kids. that can't be easy.
God bless all of them through this tragedy.
Ammunition and fireworks can and have been the cause so many tragedies among families with children, let alone adults themselves. This one hits close to home. My sympathies and prayers are with the families.
- amber quiroz
It does take a village to raise a child, if in fact the children were hitting bullets with a hammer why didn’t the neighbors say something when the adults caring for them didn’t? I heard on the news the (3) neighbors saying the kids where hitting bullets with a hammer. Why are people so fucking careless with ammunition? I’m a mother and if I hear my son and his friends hammering anything I’m out there, finding out what’s going on. But I know you cannot always be there. So where is the village? Why the fuck do children have to die like this. My sympathy to the families involved and the neighborhood that has to live with this tragedy.
I wonder where the mortal round came from, if that is indeed the cause.
It's a horrible tragedy in my neighborhood that can sadly happen anywhere... And I don't think we know the full story yet...
When I hear stories like this I wonder why in the world the amunition and possibly guns were not under lock and key. Why did children even have access to such deadly weapons. Such a senseless tragedy... my heart goes out to all the families of those children.
I live on Forrest directly behind the apartment complex. The explosion vibrated my home ... my daughter exclaimed "What was that?" and then ran outside and across the grass to the front cottage next door to see if our neighbor knew. The neighbor replied "Maybe a drug house exploded." I immediately turned on the news and began watching intently. Later they interviewed a 9 year old boy named James. He'd been watching tv inside his house near the explosion and went outside to see what was going on. He started to tear up as he had to stop describing what he saw ... he's the little boy that walks my 8 year old daughter to and from school. I'm glad he wasn't one of the unsupervised children playing with "explosives" or whatever the police are telling us.
This is why my daughter plays in our yard, where I can supervise her and make sure her and her friends don't get involved or play with something they shouldn't play with. Parents have a responsibility to teach their children not to play with hazardous materials. My daughter knows that if she sees a gun or ammunition to immediately walk away and tell an adult.
My thoughts were the same as N.L's ... Oleander must be cursed. Shoot, a man hung himself in my garage several years ago before I bought the place. When I moved in a few months ago there was a rope tied to a hook that my neighbor said he hung himself from. At the time we didn't know about the hanging. We took the rope down and used it as a temporary leash for my dog while we worked on the house. A few days later it disappeared ... and reappeared tied around the upper rafter in the garage, which is not an easy place to get up too.
My prayers and sympathies are to the children and adults who had to witness this tragedy. Hopefully now they will better educate their children.
Strange are the ghost kid stories that abound in the Oleander area as well. And now we have tragically two more spirits to add to this haunted neighborhood. Terrible news in an area filled with too much death.
Wasn't it just two years ago that someone was executed in a nearby Blanche St. apartment? And weren't they only 18?
Thank you Kayk for sharing your story. More kids could have died or been hurt...
*NOTE: Although Paperback Writer and Bakersfield.com had innacurracies in stories, my initial story seemed closer to the mark. Bakersfield.com/Bakersfield Californian pulled down their original story. The LA Times based their story on the original Bakersfield.com piece, but didn't pull their article.
It was a 40mm grenade.
More people/kids could have been hurt. How scary. And sad. And sickening. Stories like these just break my heart.
THat was sad... i really feel for the family.
I feel for them all,,its a waste of life,,so sad for them to die so young,,I dont beleive thou that the guy they supposed to have got it from thought it still had gunpower in it and was harmless,,just a sad situation really.
This is the neighborhood I grew up in. I also worked at a local elementary school for 7 years. The same "ghost stories" that abound today were just as prevalent when I was a child. This neighborhood is such a mixture of people that often tradedy strikes closer to home than we would like. My prayers are with these families.
I used to live right in this neighborhood for years. It was nice for awhile then it became so crime and tragedy stricken. I had to get the hell out of there for the sake of my children. I don't think it was the "punk-out" thing to do like a lot of my old neighbors said. It was the smart thing. After reading this, I know I did the right thing. God bless those families. At least the kids are in a safer place with Him now.
There is a ton of crime in Oleander... and I forgot about the shooting in the convenience store down the street, and a friend had her house completely gutted by thieves...
My daughter came home yesterday and bluntly said "Mom, the girl who died was my friend Jeni"
Jeni was the first girl to introduce herself to my daughter while we were working on restoring parts of my home before we moved in. She lived just across the alley from us and played in my yard a few times. One of those kids who you meet and just think to yourself "That's a good kid"
I could see her lip quiver and her eyes misted, but she held in her tears (that's her nature). So it was even closer to home than I had thought. She also told me what her friend Paul had told her happened. Pretty accurate to what the news is now releasing.
If you'd ever like to join us for dinner you are welcome ... we are proof of the 6 degrees of separation. You know A.S. who knows my roomate James, who wrote "Sam Slueth"
When I was in the military. You could only have ammo on the Firing range. It is stolen Goverment property if it is in the hands of a civilian. And then give it to children to play with!! Someone's going to jail!
We live in Oleander and we think it's the most wonderful neighborhood in the city. St. Francis is a block away, little markets just a few blocks more, no traffic, the best trick or treating in the world, I could go on and on. It's like a little city. I shop, kids attend school, my work, going out on the weekends, bands in the park, the dentist, doctor, auto repair, everything we do on a day to day basis, all within a mile from our house. Every once in a while we have a crime, or a gangbanger walk through, big deal! It's better than Rosedale traffic and giant monster trucks driven by Wal Mart ladden mothers in a hurry to get to gymnastics and drop off little sissy and mary lou! This neighborhood is awsome and I'm never leaving it. You can have Riverlakes golf course and the fat drunk golfers that don't want to go home and do their big wives, I'll be at the RaboBank watching hockey just down the street! I'll be at Dewar's and Happy Jacks and you northwest people can have fun at The Macaroni grill.
Hey Kayk, please email me.
I just got word that a friend of mine in Fiji heard about this tragedy. She had no idea it was so close to home. She works in the islands helping educate families about how to properly treat the world's youth, and about gender equality.
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