CHICAGO — His left eye still swollen shut, Vashion Bullock doesn't deny fighting in the massive brawl that claimed a Fenger High School student's life two weeks ago.
He has watched the grainy fight video and seen himself standing shirtless in the middle of the frenetic mob. But to him, the footage is a 2-minute-and-26-second clip of his world without context, broadcast endlessly on television and the Web.
Participants in the brawl included students who made the honor roll, worked after-school jobs, played sports and planned for college. They wake up in worlds frayed by poverty and violence.
Bullock and other students bused in from Altgeld Gardens have fought for years with kids who live closer to the high school and see them as outsiders, according to interviews by the Chicago Tribune with dozens of students and parents. The Fenger senior said he often races to the bus stop to avoid confrontation. But that Thursday, he had been suspended for a school fight. And he'd had enough.
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"How many times you want me to walk away?" asked Bullock, whose brother, Eugene Riley, 16, is charged with murder for striking Derrion Albert, 16, with a wooden plank. Three others were charged in the melee, which involved at least 50 teens.
"We've been running for so long, and I'm tired of running," Bullock said. "Running only leads to more running."
The fight sparked national outrage.
The Chicago Public Schools district and Chicago police once again are being called upon to provide safe passage for students heading to and from school. But the dramatic violence captured on the video highlights concerns about a much more fundamental safe passage — the treacherous journey for many Chicago teens from adolescence to adulthood.
Violence in Chicago has already claimed five teens in the last month, three of them public-school students. And if previous years are any indication, dozens more will die in the coming school year. Neither schools nor police, both of whom knew of the rising tension at Fenger, have been able to stem the tide.
That ever-present violence has taken its toll on how teens view themselves and their futures. Some simply don't believe they have one.
"I don't think a new day is promised to nobody," said Bullock, 17, clutching a bag of ice to his injured eye. "Anything could happen at any time."
Sometimes the violence is race-related, such as a brawl last year at Foreman High School on the north side. Sometimes it's gang-related, such as rivalries at Crane High School on the west side. And sometimes, like Fenger on the far south side, it's about neighborhoods — the area by the school called the "Ville" and Altgeld Gardens, several miles to the south.
Despite their mutual dislike, the two sides involved in the Fenger melee share much in common. Both live in impoverished neighborhoods beset by crime. When challenged physically, they feel they have no choice but to fight. Neither side sees itself as the aggressor. Perhaps most tragically, those charged in Albert's fatal beating came from both factions. Neither side said it meant to kill anyone.
These are kids navigating a complex landscape of social problems, clinging to whatever sense of identity and esteem they can find. When violence erupts, it's often about them defending what little they have.
"The video is troubling but not extraordinary," said Dewey Cornell, director of a youth violence project at the University of Virginia. "I object to the notion that these kids are somehow disturbed or abnormal. Street fights between rival groups are not new to Chicago or any other part of the United States. We have had them for centuries."
On Sept. 24, Montrell Truitt left school with his brother and headed for the bus stop at 111th and Wallace streets, a half-block north of Fenger. Trouble was already brewing, so Montrell and his brother headed east on 111th to Michigan Avenue, where they catch the bus to the Gardens.
The extended walk has become the best of the bad options for the teens, who say they're vulnerable at the stop closer to Fenger and in the heart of the Ville. As the brothers walked, a crowd started to swell behind them.
Truitt, 17, who's ranked near the top of his junior class, called his mother, a daily ritual they have on his walks from school. He and his brother, Eric Parks, 15, finally reached the rusty train tracks past Stewart Street, a half-mile from Fenger and the eastern edge of the Ville. It marks the unofficial safe zone for Gardens' teens heading home.
"All I was thinking was, 'OK, we're getting close to the tracks, so they're going to turn around,' " Truitt said.
But the teens didn't stop following that day. Some began to strip off their shirts to prepare for a fight. Ville teens say several cars of Gardens teens were there waiting.
Truitt's mother, Toya, heard tension in his voice on the phone. She told him to try to get to her workplace. But as they were talking, his phone went dead. Shortly after crossing the tracks, Truitt said he felt the hard bash of a wood plank across his back.
He stumbled, then turned and fought.
The rest is captured by a camcorder held by another Fenger student in the video that has transfixed the nation.
On the video, Albert, an honor student who has been portrayed as a bystander, can be seen throwing a punch.
What is clear from the video is how random the melee became. Two teens from the Ville — at least one of them Albert's friend — were charged with delivering the "first strike" and the "knockout blow" to the diminutive teen. Teens from the Gardens then stomp and wield one final shot with the plank.
Since Albert never claimed loyalty to either side, no one was sure with whom he was fighting, witnesses said.
Two weeks after the fight, some teens seemed to hold a sense of remorse.
Bullock, for one, is starting to recognize the gravity of what's happened. In his living room, with the lights dimmed to protect his injured eye, he struggled to process what he's feeling. His brother's self-portrait and high school diploma hang from the wall. His mother was away undergoing dialysis treatment, a routine she follows three times a week.
"I apologize that something bad happened," he said. "But I might (never) see out of my left eye . . . or see my brother again."
