Is Arthur Miller Still Alive?

Sounds like the premise to a modern urban tragedy. And fortunately Al Sharpton is nowhere near this horrible story:

A grand jury has decided not to indict a Queens man who fatally stabbed a 15-year-old girl who he said was part of a mob of teenagers attacking him after an argument on a bus.

It was the final stage of a rolling confrontation that began when the man, Winston Alladin, exchanged words with a woman who he said had cut in line to board the Q85 bus the night of June 25. Several miles later, the argument, now involving some young passengers, spilled onto a street in Springfield Gardens, where more teenagers joined in and Mr. Alladin stabbed Keyanna Jones in the chest.

“He broke down in tears because I told him he is going home,” Kevin P. O’Donnell, Mr. Alladin’s lawyer, said on Thursday.

But Mr. Alladin, who is from Trinidad, may not be able to return to his home in Queens. He was still in jail Thursday and was expected to be turned over to federal custody at the request of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, said a Rikers Island spokesman, Stephen J. Morello.

The agency did not say why it wanted Mr. Alladin detained, though it typically does so when a person’s immigration status is in question. Mr. O’Donnell said he believed Mr. Alladin, who has been in the United States for at least about 10 years and was engaged to be married, was in the country legally.

But he wants to return to Trinidad anyway, Mr. O’Donnell said.

“It is awful; he has never been arrested before,” he said. “He is a hard-working guy. One of the things he kept saying was, in his Trinidadian accent, ‘Why did these people want to hurt me? I did nothing.'”

. . .

“He had a very, very legitimate self-defense argument,” said Mr. O’Donnell. “He had been chased by 10 or 12 kids for no reason for an argument that happened half an hour earlier that did not involve any of them. It was like a pack of wolves.

“He was running up and down the street screaming for people to call the police,” he said. “He was being hit by rocks, punched.

“He goes into the street and these kids surround him,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “One at a time they are stepping in and punching him.”

His back against a wall, Mr. Alladin pulled out the knife, he said.

“He had a knife in his bag, he was hoping they would see the knife and back off,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “It just so happened that the next person that stepped up to hit him happened to be this young girl. He did not know if it was a girl, he did not know if it was a boy, he just stuck the blade out to protect himself and she happened to get cut. Unfortunately it was a lethal stabbing.”

“‘Why did these people want to hurt me?” It’s a much, much better last line than Eric Bogosian’s final lines in subUrbia: “What is wrong with you . . . You throw it all away!” People, this is A Raisin in the Sun meets subUrbia! Pitch now!