Jul 13, 2008 10:04 pm US/Central
Citizens March For Peace on the Streets
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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South Side community members walked for peace Sunday after another teen was fatally shot this weekend.
CBS
Dozens of people spent their Sunday marching through a South Side neighborhood to promote peace. And as CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli reports, many of the demonstrators are directly effected by the recent flux of violent crime.
In the past 24 hours, a 15-year-old and 17-year old have been killed. To combat shootings like those, hundreds of people marched with religious leaders to demand peace."This was an innocent kid, man. Wrong place, wrong time," said Earl Harris, the uncle of shooting victim Marlow Jones.Stuffed animals and a cross mark the location, on Lafayette south of 119th Street, where 17-year-old Jones was killed. It happened around midnight when Jones was walking home, as one man was beating another with a pistol.
"He had a gun. he took the gun and was hitting the other guy and the gun went off. That's the word I got, and it hit Marlow," said Yvonne Robinson, Jones' grandmother.The killings brought out Sweet Holy Spirit Senior Pastor Larry Trotter and members of the community to tell its young people to rise up against the violence.
"We've had a dozen or so killings within walking distance of this church in the last week and a half or so," Trotter said. "So now we take the church to the streets and give them a personal invitation for a better way of life and a safer way of life."
Earlier Saturday night, 15-year-old Juan Aguilero was fatally shot near 30th and Avers in the Little Village neighborhood, when someone on a bicycle opened fire. Police believe Aguilero's murder was gang -related.It's exactly the kind of violence almost a thousand people, including relatives of murder victims, marched to denounce. It's a protest, powered by the pain of murders old and new."I'm sad, sick. I don't know why it happened -- I don't know what I could have done," Robinson said.
Among those marching -- parents of young sons who didn't survive Chicago's often mean streets.
"My son was 25, a chemistry major, and he was starting a halfway house, and a 50-year-old man shot my son," said mother Cheryl Myles.
"My son was 23-years-old, he didn't have the opportunity to meet his baby – his baby will be born August 13," said mom Darlene Brooks.
Marlow Jones would have been a junior this fall at Fenger Academy. On Tuesday, police superintendent Jody Weis will appear at a city council hearing, delving into the increase in Chicago murders over the last six months.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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