People meet to pray, reflect over killings
On Thursday morning, 69-year-old Horace Harrington was living at 3101 Lilac St. By Saturday afternoon, a handful of people were standing in the front yard of the house, praying for answers to his killing and that of two other people who were gunned down Thursday afternoon.
The prayer vigils — one for each homicide location — were organized by Roosevelt Brown of the Pine Bluff campus of Family Church, with the first one at the home where Harrington was pronounced dead about 2 p.m. Thursday. About a dozen people showed up in cars, and a few more from the neighborhood wandered over before the 12:30 p.m. start.
Jesse Turner, a community activist who also helped organize the activity, made mention of some of the neighbors who watched the goings-on from their front yards.
“The people who are looking over here at us …,” Turner said, with Brown finishing his sentence, “are looking for hope.” To that, several people said, “Amen.”
Brown said a few words and then invited those gathered to pray. With that, people walked around the yard and across neighboring yards saying their own prayers. One woman put her hand on the house and closed her eyes as she prayed. Two other women joined hands and raised their arms to
the sky.
The Lilac Street house, which is several blocks south of Miramar Drive just off Howard Drive, is in a neighborhood where police said there have been other violent crimes over the years. Some of the homes in the area have been maintained, with people out on Saturday mowing lawns and trimming hedges. Others, however, have been burned or boarded up and abandoned.
Deputy Chief Shirley Warrior, one of four police officers who attended the prayer event, said police were still poring over evidence and had no new leads in either the Harrington killing or the two others that came shortly afterward.
At 4:40 p.m. Thursday, police found 17-year-old Emonya Moten shot to death at West 17th Avenue and South Elm Street, and 20 minutes later they went to 25 Needles Drive to find 20-year-old Kavon Mitchell shot. He was taken to Jefferson Regional Medical Center, where he later died.
“We need to be here,” Warrior said when asked about the presence of police at Saturday’s event.
There was also a shooting along Interstate 530 on Thursday night that killed a 19-year-old Little Rock man and injured three other people, also from Little Rock, in the same car. Police said they are looking into the possibility that at least some of the shootings were connected.
Another pastor, Mack Milner of The Refuge church in Dollarway, told the gathering that God had had a hand in not allowing any of the seven people recently shot in a parking lot in Pine Bluff to die.
In late August, seven people were shot about 3 a.m. at 2901 W. 28th Ave. in an incident that also saw a restaurant and other businesses damaged by gunfire.
“When that happened [no loss of life], the spirit came over me,” Milner said. “It was God saying, ‘I’m showing you that prayer does work.’”
Milner said Brown was the one who brought people together to pray for the city and that through that prayer, none of those seven people was killed.
“I’m not glorifying him,” Milner said of Brown. “But because of his obedience to get people to come together and pray, lives were saved.”
Turner said before the event started that he felt the TenPoint plan, a national program that brings together clergy, law enforcement and community members in highcrime areas, was a solution for Pine Bluff. He said he introduced it a few years ago and that it had been well-received by the city’s administration, the City Council and law enforcement.
He said he talked with national program administrators last week and was told that Pine Bluff could be put in what he called an “expansion hub” in which more focus is put on mentoring. He said he had taken that message into the school system but that it is also needed to help people find stable lives after getting out of prison and returning home.
“If they don’t get what they need after leaving prison,” Turner said, “many times they return to prison.”