‘Anything and everything’ to prevent more shootings
Victims mourned and solutions considered at gathering
HARTFORD — Not long into Wednesday night’s anti-violence rally at Dunkin’ Donuts Park, before the drum line and the opening prayer, Kally Moquete helped a group of young attendees hail an Uber.
The girls were headed to the Upper Albany library branch, where Compass Peacebuilders has been organizing activities like yoga, art and jewelry making to grow their personal connections and coping skills in a year where both are sorely needed.
Moquete, an anti-violence worker with the community youth organization, said it’s one of the ways Compass is trying to fill gaps and meet needs as Hartford grapples with soaring numbers of shootings, at least a six-year high.
“We’re literally trying to do anything and everything we can,” Moquete, 30, said.
The ballpark rally was another piece of that puzzle, organized before another shooting Tuesday night in Upper Albany left a 48-year-old Windsor man dead.
Another member of Compass, Warren Hardy, knew the victim from his days at Weaver High School.
Trevor Cumberbatch always seemed upbeat and positive, always smiling and approachable. He was the 20th person murdered in Hartford this year, and the second person shot since Friday, when police Chief Jason Thody and Mayor Luke Bronin announced 15 state police personnel would be dispatched to the city in response to the weekslong spike in gun violence.
On Wednesday, Bronin, Lt. Paul Cicero of the major crimes division, and representatives of the city’s anti-violence organizations addressed more than 50 city residents who sat socially distanced in the stands behind home plate.
They thanked each other for their dedication to preventing and responding to the violence, and Cicero promised his team would keep working to solve each new case.
“Don’t forget, keep hope alive,” he said. “We’re here for you every day”
Many of Hartford’s young men are mourning Jaqhawn Walters, a 24-year-old basketball player from the North End who was shot and killed in the neighborhood last month.
Before he was a standout at Albertus Magnus College and a professional player in Argentina, Walters was a mentor and a leader who pushed kids to get involved in youth sports and community groups.
“Every time I saw him around, he gave me a smile like he was proud,” said Jason Hippolyte, a member of Hartford Youth Service Corps.
Hippolyte, 21, who lives in Blue Hills, says it feels this year that a lot of anger is building up while everyone is trapped in their homes. And with every shooting that happens, there’s more anger.
Hippolyte is trying to keep that cycle from reaching his family, particularly his seven little brothers. But with gunfire flying in broad daylight this year, he’s worried that he won’t be able to.
“Honestly, I feel these bullets don’t have a name to it,” he said. Thomas Logan, a member of Mothers United Against Violence, said many of the families he’s met this year were doing OK up until the pandemic. He thinks the health and economic crisis has contributed to a mentality where young people live moment to moment.
“It seems like people have lost hope,” Logan said. “It used to be, ‘I hope I live to see tomorrow.’ For this generation here, it’s ‘I hope I can make it to the end of the day.’”
The Hartford man sat in one of the high-top seats behind home plate, one hand restlessly tracing the edge of a framed photo of his daughter, LaTaysha. She was murdered by her son’s father in the late summer of 2000, just a month after her 20th birthday.
Mothers United Against Violence was formed a couple years later and Logan joined, wanting to support other families in their losses and perhaps find a way to prevent killings like his daughter’s. People often tell him he must have closure because he got justice — LaTaysha’s killer was on death row until 2018, when he was resentenced to life in prison.
But those people are either holding out hope for their own justice, or they don’t understand how murders impact those left behind.
“You never have closure,” Logan, 64, said. “Closure for me will come the day I close my eyes and get to see her again.”