McKees Rocks community works to curb gun violence after teen boy killed on playground
The McKees Rocks community is working to curb gun violence after a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed on a playground.
Cure Violence McKees Rocks is finding a solution to cure gun violence and keep it from spreading. This anti-violence group works with and mentors kids in the Sto-Rox community every day after school.
>> ‘I wish I could unsee it’: Community reacts to deadly shooting of teen at McKees Rocks playground
“They are on the streets. They’re doing mediations. They’re doing interventions,” said Brett Douthett, a community outreach coordinator with Focus on Renewal. “They’re trying to prevent our young people from retaliating, and they’re getting out in front of violence in the community.”
Wednesday afternoon, the group rallied and held signs on the corner of Third Street and Broadway Avenue encouraging drivers to honk to end the gun violence. They were standing just feet away from the playground where Ahsan Edwards, 15, was shot and killed in the afternoon on Saturday, April 20.
>> Teen dead after shooting at playground in McKees Rocks
Delores Docoteau lives across the street from the playground and saw Edwards fall to the ground.
“Our neighborhood is just heartbroken, and I don’t know what we can do to fix it,” Docoteau said.
Douthett said fixing the crime would take some time.
Douthett works with at-risk kids alongside Cure Violence. He said he got to know Edwards in the library where the Sto-Rox student would hang out after school.
“He would do anything we asked him,” he said. “He’d move furniture. He was respectful, and that’s the way we’d like to remember him because he wasn’t a bad kid.”
The Sto-Rox School District will honor Edwards in a balloon release on the high school football field Thursday night at 7.
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