Teenagers, Guns, Pandemic … Lethal Combination in America

It was lunchtime on a mild day in Aurora, a Denver suburb, when a pickup truck full of teenagers He reached the parking lot of a high school and the shooting began.

Three boys were injured while the others ran off.

One of the boys charged in connection with the November 19 shooting told authorities that he had brought his armed friends to band together because “that’s how things are resolved in this city,” according to legal documents.

That was one of several shootings involving teenagers over a two-week span that drew attention to the issue of gangs and violence in Colorado’s third-largest city, where police have been under scrutiny for the treatment of black residents.

Activists and officials say that easy access to weapons contributes to the problem, which has been exacerbated by the US pandemic. COVID-19 and its impact especially on the mental health of minority adolescents.

Across the country, shootings involving children and teens have increased in recent years. A March report from the Children’s Defense Fund found that deaths of children and adolescents who were shot to death reached their highest level in 19 years in 2017 and remain high. Black children and adolescents are four times more likely to be shot to death than whites.

Aurora has welcomed many African American and Latin American families and immigrants in general from around the world as the cost of living in Denver has increased in recent years. These minority families have been hard hit by the pandemic, contributing to mental health problems, according to Maisha Fields, an activist working with youth and families in this city of 379,000 people.

The Nov. 19 shooting began with an argument in the Hinkley High School parking lot. After the first shots, the truck left and at least two of its occupants continued firing through the windows, while the others ran out, according to police.

Three 16-year-old boys were indicted in connection with this episode, including two who spoke to investigators about gang fights.

Fields, who is vice president of the Brady organization, which advocates tighter control of gun sales, said the way these kids talked about the need to carry guns gave her the creeps. It reminded him of the ruthless behavior of the murderers of his brother, Javad Marshall-Fields, and his fiancée, Vivian Wolfe, that occurred in Aurora in 2005, when he was preparing to testify against an individual accused of gunning down a friend at a concert. .

Jason McBride, a violence prevention expert who works with teens at the Struggle of Love Foundation in Denver and Aurora, and Aurora Councilmember Angela Lawson said the boys who help showed them posts from Snapchat, a service where messages disappear. , in which weapons are offered for sale.

McBride believes that gangs are responsible for much of the problem. Not necessarily organized gangs like Crips and Bloods, as in previous years, but rather smaller groups of teenagers who often start their fights through social media.

Some build their own untraceable weapons using 3-D printers or buying parts online and assembling them themselves, according to McBride.

He added that the trauma derived from the death of family members becomes almost normal for adolescents and that the fact that the pandemic prevented them from going to school, which often functions as a refuge where they escape their problems in their lives. houses, aggravates the mental disorders of some adolescents.

McBride said that a 16-year-old boy had told him that if he got into a fight he would start shooting so it wouldn’t stain his clothes. “That’s what guys think now,” McBride said.