With shootings on the rise, kids are paying the price
Families mourn children caught in the cross-fire
CHICAGO – Amaria Jones, 13, was in the living room of her West Side Chicago home showing her mom a new TikTok dance when a stray bullet came through the front window, pierced her neck and lodged in the TV.
The spray of bullets outside also wounded two boys, 15 and 16, sitting on the front porch. Amaria was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead.
“Imagine having a little sister, 13, who’s not even beginning to live life yet, and you have to dress her up for a homegoing service. You have to pick out her clothes, her hair, her casket. You have to pick out the pictures,” said Mercedes Jones, 27. “I just don’t want to come to terms with reality. I won’t have my sister anymore.”
Amaria’s heart-wrenching death was one of many in a summer of violence across the nation. Shootings are on the rise in several cities amid the social and economic upheaval of a public health crisis and a movement calling for racial justice – and young children are caught in the crossfire.
“Due to the pandemic, as well as a confluence of factors, we’ve just seen a truly perfect storm develop in communities that are already grappling with systemic inequity and a lack of access to opportunity,” said Michael-Sean Spence, director of policy and implementation for Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit group advocating for gun control. “Cites are grappling with dual pandemics.”
Amaria was more than Jones’ only sister. She was like a daughter and a best friend.
“She was just so happy. She was a people’s person,” Jones said of Amaria, who wanted to be a lawyer. “Amaria would fight for whatever she thought was right.”
Amaria was one of at least 12 minors fatally shot in Chicago in the past month – many while playing outside, riding in a car or sitting on a couch – and many more have been wounded.
Mekhi James, 3, was killed two hours earlier than Amaria, about a mile away. He was sitting in the backseat of his father’s car on their way home from a haircut. That weekend, 104 people were shot in Chicago, 15 of them fatally, including three more minors. Dozens more were shot and killed over the following weekends.
“Children are dying in the streets for a fourth weekend in a row,” said West Side pastor Marshall Hatch. “Something is tragically wrong in what we’re doing and what we value. People are despondent about it – that this is what it’s come to.”
The most deadly weekend in Chicago came at the end of May amid protests and looting, when 85 people were shot, 24 fatally.
“Children are dying in the streets . ... Something is tragically wrong.” Marshall Hatch West Side Chicago pastor
Overall crime rates – including violent crimes – are low across the USA, but homicides and shootings are on the rise this year in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, D.C., Philadelphia, Houston, Charlotte, North Carolina, Denver, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Kansas City, Missouri.
Last Monday, New York City observed a moment of silence for Davell Gardner Jr., 1, who was fatally shot in his stomach while sitting in a stroller at a Brooklyn cookout the night before.
As of July 5, shootings were up 53% from the same time last year in New York City, according to police.
In Atlanta, where Secoriea Turner, 8, was fatally shot on Independence Day, shootings were up 23% from last year as of July 4, according to police.
In Chicago, shootings increased 46% from the same time last year as of July 12, according to police.
In Washington, where the killing of Davon McNeal, 11, rattled the nation’s capital, homicides are up 24% from the same time last year, and assault with a dangerous weapon is up 1%, according to police.
Davon’s mother was hosting a community peace cookout July 4 in Southeast D.C. Davon had just stepped out of his mother’s car when two groups fired at one another.
“Davon was in the middle, and he got shot,” said Davon’s grandfather, John Ayala. “There are moments when you want to break down. But I’m holding on because I have to.”
Davon had been a star football player, Ayala said. He started playing when he was 6, taking after his older brother.
“Once he started playing, he became the most valuable player,” Ayala said. “He wanted to go to the NFL and buy his momma a big house. He’s never going to get the opportunity to pursue that dream now.”
Ayala said Davon had been learning from his mother how to be a positive influence in the community. He helped her with the peace cookout and assisted in book and coat drives.
“He was learning at a young age about how to be a role model,” Ayala said.
Ayala said he’s been reflecting on all of his favorite memories with Davon – when he’d throw him in the pool in the summer, when they went to Six Flags, when he’d run around the house trying to catch him while yelling, “Boy kiss, boy kiss!”
Ayala and his wife had planned to take Davon and their other grandkids on the annual trip to Orlando the weekend that he was killed, but they had canceled the trip because of the pandemic.
“Our granddaughter who is 8, we did a balloon release the other day, and she was crying because of that. She said next time we go on trips, Davon won’t be there,” Ayala said.
Gun violence researchers and community outreach workers say the uptick in gun violence is the result of three main factors: the typical summertime spike in shootings, the coronavirus pandemic and nationwide social unrest.
The violence has hurt Black and Hispanic children and teens, in particular, Spence said. Annually, about 3,000 children and teens are shot and killed, according to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control’s webbased Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System. According to researchers, Black children and teens, in particular, are 14 times more likely than their white counterparts to die by gun homicide.