12/5/2023 0 Comments Real life freedom writers castRonnell Spencer, one of Jones’ friends who also had been celebrating at the Boogie, was shot in the head during the confrontation but survived. He stumbled back inside, according to witnesses, where he collapsed and died. He was shot once in the upper torso just as he emerged from the restaurant. Then they robbed Jones too - at the point of a gun - before running into the parking lot. He walked into the bathroom at a nearby Denny’s Restaurant just as a group of Long Beach gang members were robbing two of his friends of jewelry, cell phones and shoes, according to police reports. ![]() On March 17, 2006, shortly after a celebration at the Boogie nightclub in Anaheim to mark the end of filming of “Freedom Writers,” Jones had his own encounter with gang members. Rice – the character – survived his gang encounter in “Freedom Writers.” The shots missed their intended target, but struck and killed another young man.Īrmand Jones, the actor who played Rice in the movie, was an 18-year-old Long Beach man who in real life attended Cerritos Junior College, was active in his church, worked as an intern at NBC, and was an aspiring rap artist who went by “Young Prozpect,” according to news accounts. In one scene, rival gang members fired shots at one of Gruwell’s students - a character named Grant Rice – in a drive-by as he walked out of a convenience store. That’s the premise of a book “The Freedom Writers Diary,” written by Gruwell an ABC documentary, and eventually the 2007 true-life movie “Freedom Writers,” which starred two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank as the inspirational Gruwell. Her idealism was tested immediately when she was confronted with students who had been written off by some within the educational system as the “unteachables,” who came from poor, uneducated and racially-divided backgrounds and who lived in neighborhoods where gang violence was a fact of life. Gruwell had bright eyes and high hopes when she walked into her high school English classroom at Long Beach Wilson for the first time in 1994. ![]() “We want to be eternally connected with this family who has endured so much and has been a pillar of strength and courage and epitome of what it means to overcome adversity,” Gruwell said. In the true-life movie about a high school teacher who made a difference in the lives of her students living in a gang-infested neighborhood, a character narrowly escaped death in a gang shooting.īut in real life, the actor who played that character died in the arms of his friends after he was shot in an eerily similar act of gang violence.Įrin Gruwell, the idealistic teacher who inspired the movie, remains involved in the fight against gang violence: She was in the courtroom Friday offering support to the family of the murdered actor when the last of five defendants were sentenced.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |