Practice Feature Lead

     In this blog, I will be practicing and assessing my ability to write my own practice lead as I will have to create one for my own magazine.

Given the story below:

   "The police in this municipality received a call at 3:45 p.m. yesterday afternoon. A woman shouted at the sergeant who answered the telephone. She said: "My son's been beaten. His teacher whipped him this afternoon, and he's all red where she paddled him. Can teachers do that? That's assault and battery, and I want her arrested." Two police officers were sent to the home. They questioned the boy, who is 9 years old. At his mother's insistence, the police officers also inspected the boy's reported injuries. They reported: "We couldn't tell that the boy had been paddled. His fanny didn't look red to us, but we did notice that his pants legs were wet and muddy. As we talked, it became obvious that he boy was lying. He finally admitted that he had stopped to play on the way home from school, forgot the time and got home late. He told his mother that the teacher had spanked him and kept him after school. His mother was there with us and heard the whole story. She said she'd take of the situation, and we're quite certain that she will, as she was very embarrassed. In fact, we could hear her giving the kid a real paddling as we left—and a hard one."

I created the feature lead below:

    Greeted by a screaming mother, Srgt. Adams was trying to grasp the situation. A panicking mother is never a sign of anything good.

"Just breathe ma'am. I need you to tell me your location" 

She breaks down as she cries out, "My son's been beaten. His teacher whipped him this afternoon, and he's all red where she paddled him."

"Ok ma'am please hold tight, help is on the way."

Sargent gathered his belongings and rushed to the scene in hopes of arriving before things escalated any further.