AT A LOSS FOR WORDS

A parent and a teacher talk about helping kids cope after the shooting

One parent. One teacher. Two adults trying to help children make sense out
of a seemingly senseless killing.

Jerrette Lee and Stan Lane were among perhaps thousands of Columbus
residents faced with tough questions and offering hopeful answers in the
wake of the recent tragedy.

A Muscogee County sheriff's deputy shot Kenneth B. Walker in the head Dec.
10 after the unarmed 39-year-old husband and father reportedly didn't follow
law enforcement orders when he and three friends were stopped on Interstate
185.

Lee and Lane are retired military officers. Lee, 42, was a captain in the
Army. Now, he's a volunteer income tax consultant and active in the PTA.
Lane, 51, was a colonel in the Air Force. Now, he's a science teacher at
Richards Middle School.

Here's how they counseled and comforted questioning kids this past week.

The parent

Lee and his family didn't know it at the time, but the same night Walker was
killed, they were driving home from a restaurant and saw a policeman fixing
a flat tire on a woman's car along Veterans Parkway.

"See?" Lee pointed out to his 9-year-old son, Daniel. "Law enforcement are
good folks."

Daniel, a Britt David fourth-grader, used to play dress-up as a policeman.
He recently expressed concern about allegations of police brutality in
Cincinnati after watching TV earlier this month.

"I just told him those things probably happen once in a million times," Lee
said. "I was trying to feed the positive into him, and the next thing we
knew, that whole Kenny Walker thing broke wide open."

Then so did Daniel's questions:

. Why didn't they know the gray GMC Yukon that Walker was in didn't have
drugs? (An anonymous informant told officials during a drug stakeout to look
for a vehicle of that description.)

. Why was he shot in the head?

. Why was more than one shot fired?

"When a 9-year-old asks you that... wow," said Lee, who used to take a
fitness class with Walker. "It's been a whirlwind, but I just told him that
an investigation is being done and everyone has stated that the truth will
come forth, and maybe this was the sacrificial lamb to find out if there are
any wolves in sheep's clothing and what's wrong with the system.

"But I guess we always look for justification of why things happen. Until
this one becomes completely clear, I'm basically at a loss for words."

Daniel bewildered his father even more when he noted, "Dad, you're a good
guy, too, so that could have been you."

"Yeah," Lee said, "that shook me up a bit."

The teacher

Lane, the Richards science teacher, heard a seventh-grade girl declare
Monday, "Police are targeting certain groups of people."

Lane responded, "I don't think you're in a position to know for sure what
happened."

The next day, that exchange prompted Lane to expand his weekly 10-minute
lesson about character education into a 20-minute discussion about the
Walker shooting.

Sure, this wasn't a science topic, but Lane figured this was a vital and
teachable moment for 12- and 13-year-olds -- and he didn't shy away.

"I was concerned that kids this age would soon begin to have encounters with
police," Lane said. "We didn't discuss who was right and who was wrong, but
just how to follow directions and cooperate if they found themselves in a
bad situation so they can stay safe. I wanted to lessen some of their
fears."

Lane explained to his students that law enforcement officers are people just
like anyone, but they have more stress than most.

"I wanted them to understand police are human, too, yet they might have a
different perspective," he said.

Then he guided the students through role playing, alternately pretending to
be an officer and a suspect.

"The one kid who said police are just targeting black men changed his view
and realized policemen have to make decisions real quickly and they don't
have hours and days to think about them," Lane said.

By the end of the day, Lane estimates about 200 students heard his life
lesson in his science class.

"I'm not sure we made the issues go away," he said, "but I think we made
them feel better."