Prevention training needed for kids

Published 2:22 pm Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Earlier this month the Oregonian newspaper reported on the abduction and murder of 13-year-old Alycia Nipp down in Hazel Dell, Wash., which is just north of Vancouver.

Alycia was stabbed to death by a Level 3 Sex Offender on her way home from school Feb. 21, 2009 simply because she took a shortcut through a neighborhood field.

Just like the abductions and murders of 10-year-old Adre’Anna Jackson in Tillicum, Wash., and 12-year-old Zina Linnik in Tacoma, Wash., these past few years, Alycia’s abduction and murder points to the need for mandatory abduction-prevention training in all Washington public school P.E. classes.

So why isn’t Gov. Christine Gregoire and state Sens. Lisa Brown and Mike Hewitt sponsoring a Senate bill this legislative session to support mandatory abduction-prevention training in our public-school P.E. classes? It certainly isn’t because I haven’t begged each of them to do so for quite some time!

Jim Curtis

North American Self Defense Foundation

Maple Valley