Please… No more killing

The apartments I live in have two parallel courtyards. When I came home from church today, I saw this lying on the sidewalk in front of the second courtyard.

“Lamar” is probably Lamar Montez Murry, who was shot and killed just a short distance from these apartments, near Trolly Garden Way.  He lived in one of the apartments behind me.

News reports show three non-fatal shootings the day before in the Zaferia/ Cambodia Town neighborhood, two of them on 15th street blocks from where I live. Those shootings appear unrelated to the killing the next day, but all of this speaks to the level of violence in this neighborhood in recent months.

I’ve grown unused to this level of violence, having lived in New Mexico.  I recall when we first moved to NM after living in Long Beach for just a year, we used to laugh because the top story was about a bear that walked into a Presbyterian Medical building.  It was the top story for weeks.

It makes me sad because recently I’ve come to the realization that there are a lot of people who grow up thinking this level of violence is the norm around the country.  About a week ago, a little girl who lives a couple doors down was talking to one of the young boys (probably 12ish) about his time in “jail” (I’m assuming it was juvenile detention) and the first question she asked him was “Was it scary or was it fun?”   He told her it was “kidna fun.”  to other questions, he answered that yes, other kids beat him up in jail, and it hurt, and that they fed him a lot of hamburgers, which he thought was good.

Neither of the kids seemed to think there was anything unusual about the discussion, or about a prepubescent boy being in jail, or about being beat up in jail.

And that makes me sad, because it seems to me that criminal activity and violence are so much a part of life here, that it IS normal for these children and for many of the adults around here.

I’d like to be able to treat those kids (and adults) to a week where the biggest thing to happen in their city is that a wild animal triggered the automatic doors on the local clinic.