Targeting Violence: Regional Conference Explores Prevention of Crimes, Gang Awareness
The conference in Cranberry brought together law enforcement members, school administrators, and community leaders from Western Pennsylvania to discuss violent crime and gang activity.
As an interviewer off-screen asks him if the crimes he committed were worth the penalty, Luke Woodham begins to cry. “It’s real hard to live with the things I’ve done,” he said between sobs. Now 30, Woodham is serving three life sentences for killing two students and injuring seven others in 1997 at his high school in Pearl, MS. Before heading to class that day he fatally bludgeoned his mother. Asked in the videotaped interview if anything might have prevented him from attacking, Woodham said he might have reconsidered his plan if someone had talked to him. “I would have opened up,” he said. Woodham’s story was featured at a regional conference on gang awareness and violent crime Wednesday at the Regional Learning Alliance Center in …
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