Following Tuesday’s drive-by shooting in Hartford that claimed the lives of a young mother and her infant son, violence prevention advocates – who are all too familiar with gun violence – say it’s time for a change.
Janice Hill and other members of Mothers United Against Violence gathered near the scene of the shooting that killed 20-year-old Jessiah Mercado and 4-month-old Messiah Diaz.
Hill lost her son, Alford Grayson, in a 2015 shooting. This week’s news brought back painful memories.
“It’s hard when you gotta grieve the death of a child. It’s hard. It’s not easy,” Hill said. “I don’t care how long or how many years it happened – the hurt comes back, because you’re reliving. When you hear somebody else’s child got murdered, and a baby got murdered, that brings that hurt back again.”
Henrietta Beckman leads Mothers United Against Violence. She, too, lost a son to gun violence. Randy died in 2002.
“These two young people did not deserve this,” Beckman said. “That baby had his whole life to live. His mom had her whole life to live.”
“I mean, a 20-year-old and a 4-month-old? Come on, y’all,” Beckman said.
The Rev. Henry Brown, a shooting survivor himself, called on Hartford residents to come together to stop gun violence.
“The siege is upon this community,” Brown said. “We’ve got to do better for one another. We’ve got to really put our ankles in the ground and say, ‘No more with this stuff right here. It’s gotta stop.’ Because the only way we’re gonna stop this stuff – and I hope people are listening to me – is through the people in the community.”
Hill said the shooting deaths of the mother and son – the 18th and 19th homicides of the year in Hartford – should be a wake-up call for residents to get involved in violence prevention.
“Stop sitting in your house saying, ‘Oh, it ain’t my child,’” Hill said. “It one day can be your child. You gotta come together, work together. We are a community.”
Beckman says the community is best positioned to help stop the killings.
“A lot of us know when someone is going to commit a crime,” Beckman said. “If we see something or hear something, say something.”
Responding to so many shootings takes its toll, Brown said. As he walked away from reporters Wednesday, he expressed frustration.
“I have to deal with this all the time,” Brown said. “I’m sick of it.”
