Is the phenomenon of pedestrians attacking vehicles becoming a fad? Not long ago, I wrote a post about a group of "at least 15" Milwaukee kids who dragged a man from his car and beat him nearly to death.

Today I find a similar story out of Illinois:

(CBS) BELLWOOD, Ill. A UPS driver was savagely beaten by middle school students while delivering packages in the western suburbs Friday.

The attack happened in Bellwood along the 3200 block of St. Charles. A teenager was arrested Monday after admitting he was involved in the incident. Another juvenile is expected to turn himself in Tuesday to appear in a line-up.

In a CBS 2 excusive, Joanie Lum talked to the man who was savagely beaten just trying to do his job.

UPS driver Thomas Murphy says he was beaten by a group of school kids on busy St. Charles Road in Bellwood, the route he has driven for 12 years.

He says a teenager walked out in front of his delivery truck Friday at about 3 p.m. When he stopped the truck, 15 to 20 youths surrounded him.

"Somebody clocked me with a pipe. I took kicks from my right. My eyes caked over. I tried to get up and defend myself as best I could," Murphy said.

He was beaten from his head to his ankles.

And, according to this site, the school isn't doing a very good job of educating them. In 2005, only 15% of Roosevelt Middle School's 8th grade students met or exceeded Illinois' Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) standards in Math.

Such poor academic performance may not be related to criminal attacks, but I think it indicates that either the schools aren't doing their job of teaching, or the kids have little interest in learning. If the latter is the case, does it really make sense to force them to attend school?

Said the driver,

"Somebody should be held accountable for these kids. They run wild like a pack of wolves, where's the parents?"

Whether it's the school, the parents, or the children who are to blame, it's a shame these children are being left behind. But there's one thing I wouldn't leave behind if I had to drive past that Illinois holding facility they call a school, and that's a gun.

Easy for me to say. The problem is, incidents like these always seem to happen in states like Illinois and Wisconsin which don't allow concealed carry.

There's hope for Wisconsin, though. The Senate just overrode the governor's veto of the recently passed concealed carry law.

UPDATE: Jeff Soyer has more on the Wisconsin veto override.