For University of Memphis senior, Sabrina Wein, Westside High School is much more than a newspaper headline. It is home.
Wein, a 22-year-old criminal justice major, graduated three years ago as the salutatorian of Westside High\'d5s class of 2001. Wein had attended Westside for a total of six years, from the seventh grade to graduation.
"Westside is my alma mater and yes, we had problems, but nothing this bad. This is ridiculous," Wein said.
Westside has now become the center of media coverage after a middle school boy, Taurus Williams, was found unconscious in the school\'d5s second floor bathroom.
"I am saddened by this event. I feel so bad for his family and for the students who were there when this happened," Wein said. "I can't imagine dealing with something like that in middle school."
Williams, 14, was found around 10:30 a.m. and was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Le Bonheur Children\'d5s Hospital.
Although it has been more than three years since Wein called Westside her school, it remains a part of life, primarily because two of her six siblings attend the Middle/high School.
Her oldest sibling, Michelle Wein, currently attends and participates as a student office worker. She was working in the office when Williams was first found.
"When it first happened I was in the office and they said somebody was fighting upstairs on the middle school hall and that someone was on the ground and they weren't getting up. So I ran upstairs to see what was going on because I was scared that my sister might have been involved, and that is when a teacher told me that it was only boys," Michelle said. \
Michelle said that a teacher was blocking the end of the hallway, where the incident took place.
"I think it is a crying shame that all of those boys (two fighting, three watching) were out of class at the same time," Michelle said.
According to Michelle, 17, there was more going on than what has been covered in the local news, some stories that are only discussed in the school's halls.
Michelle said that on Tuesday when the boy died, she heard that the nurse was going around asking people if they knew CPR.
"Someone told me that she was asking teachers if they knew CPR, and so everybody thought she didn't know it," Michelle said.
But Wednesday at school, Michelle said she was told that in fact a school coach performed CPR, while the nurse assisted.
Another fact that Michelle said the local news has confused is what year the boys were in school.
"The news keeps saying that the boys were in eighth grade, but when we looked up their files, they said they were in the seventh grade," Michelle said.
Also she said that the bathroom incident was in fact a form of a gang initiation called "jump in" and not just another school fight.
Sabrina and Michelle's younger sister, Rachel Taylor, said that on Wednesday the school brought in Memphis City School Board psychologists to help soothe the students.
"They just told us to move on and don't keep thinking about it," Taylor said.
Michelle said the following events were just as chaotic as the actual incident
"After all of this, a woman called the office and said that she hated Westside and that this school doesn't care about children and that she had already checked out her child, so she was going to blow up the building," Michelle said.
Sabrina said that she still loves the school she came from, and is sad to see it represented in such a bad light.
"I think it is sad that parents can\'d5t trust that their children are safe in school anymore," Wein said. "This boy's mother probably sent him to school thinking she was giving her son a chance at a better life, and because of nonsense he no longer has one."
