KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -
A group of teenagers and some even younger allegedly attacked another teen with his little sister tearfully watching. Their mother doesn't know what upsets her more - that he was attacked or that no one in the neighborhood came to their aid.
Jonathan Larsen will no longer walk his neighborhood alone - not without Mr. Jones, a retired K-9.
Larsen told his mother a group of teens, some possibly as young as 10 years old, harassed him as he walked to pick up his 9-year-old sister from an after school program near 84th Street and Brooklyn Avenue.
"About seven guys kept asking me if I wanted to buy a hoodie, if I had change for a 20," Larsen said.
Larsen ignored them and reached his sister. But even with her in hand, he said the group continued to taunt him, like asking for his cell phone. Then, one of them punched him.
"Another one of them swung around and got me in the temple and I kept walking. Then they threw a beer bottle and it broke on contact," Larsen said.
Still thinking of his sister who was already in tears, Larsen said he kept walking with blood dripping from his head - a cut that would later require several stitches.
"I'm very proud of him," said Jackie Jursch, Larsen's mother.
The incident occurred about 5:30 p.m. Monday. Larsen's mother received a call from police that her son had been assaulted.
"My son walked six blocks in this bloody shirt, a white T, and no one, not a single person, looked at my son or saw why my daughter was crying. We need to become a stronger neighborhood," Jursch said.
At the hospital Jursch said a nurse mentioned that Larsen wasn't the only person attacked by a similar group of kids. Jursch wants residents to keep an eye out for violence instead of turning away from it.
"If you see something out of the ordinary, take the time. If you ain't going to go up to them at least make a phone call," she said.
Larsen's neighbor did call police and an ambulance. KCTV5's Heather Staggers checked with the Kansas City, MO, Police Department to see if this was a reoccurring incident in that area, but she is still waiting for those results. Police will look at surveillance video from nearby buildings that captured the teens on camera.
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