To end killings, end child trauma
As assailants unleashed bullets that killed 7-year-old Kelby Shorty in front of his home on July 4th, three other children took cover in a closet.
One was 4. Another was 5. The oldest was 9. All were children who should have been playing hide and seek in that closet, not hide and survive.
But while the children evaded the bullets that killed Kelby that night, chances are they won’t escape the trauma that his slaying inflicted.
And if Kelby’s death anesthetizes them to violence at an early age, they may grow up to be perpetrators of it.
That almost happened to Charlie Caswell, who operates Legacy of Legends, a Frayser community development corporation that focuses on mental health and wellness.
“I grew up as a 14, 15-year-old young man who in two years, watched one of my friends shot, and his intestines come out, and the next year, seeing one [friend] shot point blank in the head, and so, I grew up with that,” he said.
“So, I was desensitized to that…i didn’t cry when my father died. When other friends died, I was numb to it… “I could have shot somebody.”
Yet as Caswell ultimately found mentors who helped him to see violence as an aberration in his life, the trauma of violence forces many Memphis youths to see the opposite.
All of which offers clues to the forces behind the gunfire that claimed
Kelby’s life – and the violent crimes, committed mostly by young adults in Memphis virtually every day. Too many see violence as a way of settling scores, and the idea of someone dying isn’t a deterrent.
Even if the someone who dies is a 7 year old.
According to an arrest affidavit for Angieline Kennedy, one of three suspects who drove up to Kelby’s house on the night of July 4, witnesses said that after an argument ensued, the suspects began shooting at the house.
Two people outside were injured as others scrambled to escape the bullets, including the three children who hid in the closet.
The bullets struck Kelby, who had been outside shooting firecrackers, in the head and legs. He died on the spot. But here’s what’s also sad.
Kennedy, who has been charged with first-degree murder in Kelby’s slaying, is only 20 years old. Jordan Pittman, who is also charged with first-degree murder in Kelby’s slaying, is 19. Adoniss Wright, charged with being an accessory to murder, is 26.
They’re all young adults. They’re in that group who, according to reports from the Shelby County Crime Commission, commit more than half of the violent crime in Memphis. So far this year, that violence has claimed more than 140 lives, according to MPD.
Ten of those lives belonged to children like Kelby.
While the affidavit, nor any of the news reports, indicate what kind of childhood Kennedy, Pittman and Wright experienced, it doesn’t take much of a leap to grasp that anyone who would blast a gun at people sitting on a porch, without caring about a child being caught in the crossfire, obviously has long been desensitized to violence.
That means they often see self-defense not simply as protecting oneself against physical threats, but against slights or injuries to the ego.
Too often, the chosen weapon for that defense is a gun. Children like Kelby who get killed are an afterthought, if a thought at all.
“Some people look at anger management as a solution, but it’s only a tool,” said Altha Stewart, senior associate dean for community health engagement and director of the Center for Justice Involved Youth at University of Tennessee Health Science Center. “The real issue is how is it that so many young people have such difficulty regulating the range of emotions that so many of us feel on a daily basis?”
““The bottom line is that all of us are exposed to something, during the course of the day, that ticks us off. Everybody experiences it…so, what is the different between some young people who say, ‘OK, fine, I’m moving on,’ and others who say, ‘I’m coming back, and I got something for you.’”
Trying to figure that out – how to stem the trauma and the desensitization that turns young adults into killers – is a major challenge.
But it can be met.
Caswell’s organization and others are working to help inject community members into the lives of youths, and their families, who may be headed for a future in which they become a statistic and turn others into statistics.
But for that to work, a pipeline – not like the school to prison one – must be established.
The schools, can be a major line of defense in identifying youths who are grappling with violence and trauma and providing them with the counseling and interventions they need.
Then, when those youths return to their communities, groups and agencies such as Caswell’s must be available to reinforce the work of the schools; to provide the help to steer them away from a future, defined by violence.
That’s important.
“Even in the schools, after they do all the counseling and coping skills, when the children go back into that hard environment, it just re-triggers everything,” Caswell said.
“Many of our families and individuals, their hearts are so stony and so cold, even if you put something in it, it won’t stick because of the generations of trauma they’ve experienced,”.
But most of all, commitments must be made to funding these interventions if they are proven to work; if they lead to a reduced murder rate and a revived reputation for Memphis.
Too often, just as efforts are working, the funding dries up.
For example, Shelby County Schools is devoting stimulus money to hiring more counselors and behavioral specialists. But what happens when that money runs out?
This isn’t a problem that can be resolved effectively solely through philanthropy and volunteerism.