by Adam Grannick for the Moral Courage Project
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK - Savannah, a reserved young woman in high school, points at the sidewalk across the quiet Williamsburg street, where she remembers seeing a group of young men her age attack another young man. "They were punching him, slapping him," she recalls. "They had knives, and they were stabbing him."
It was after school, and Savannah had been walking home with a friend. "I didn't know how to react at first," she admits, especially since she knew the young men who were stabbing the student, and had been friends with some of them in middle school.
But as she saw the young man's head being knocked repeatedly into the cement, she realized that nobody was going to do anything to stop this. "Nobody else was outside to see," she remembers. "He wouldn't be able to get out of this himself because he was blocking his face [with his hands]."
At that moment, Savannah threw her knapsack down and ran into the melee with her friend. Watch this short clip to watch Savannah's story in her own words. Her actions and advice demonstrate maturity beyond her years:
