For years, Se’Cret’s grandparents had spoken out about the dangers of guns. For a while, Rice worked as the outreach coordinator for CT Against Gun Violence. Now she was part of a crew of “peace builders” trying to put her community’s youth on the right path.
Even before the death of his son, and now his granddaughter, the Rev. Sam Saylor knew well how gun violence was eating away at his community — a numbing regularity in too many neighborhoods, he said. Killing after killing, the pastor would show up to as many vigils as he could to pray with bereaved families.
“It’s just trauma on top of trauma,” Saylor said Saturday after friends and family gathered for a vigil in Hartford for his grandchild. Never did he expect, he said, “that I would be in this parade of pain again.”
Se’Cret was sitting in a parked car when she was shot, an innocent and unintended victim of a barrage of bullets that sent people running for cover.
Investigators said no arrests have been made, but they were still looking for at least two people believed to be in the vehicle that sped away after the shooting.
Oliver’s killer, an acquaintance, is now serving 40 years in prison.
On the day he died, Oliver had left home to collect money for a car he sold.
Like many gun-related killings, it began with an argument. Words escalated, and a gun was drawn. Oliver tried to run, but he did not get far. Two bullets to the back, and he died a few hours later.
During sentencing in 2015, Rice had pleaded for more prison time.
“I certainly hope it will save another mom from all the pain I’ve endured,” the Hartford Courant quoted Rice telling the judge during sentencing.
Still welling with grief, Oliver’s parents drove to Newtown to get an audience with then-Vice President Joe Biden, who was visiting with the grieving parents of the 20 children gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Biden met separately with Saylor, Rice and other parents who raised concerns that the deaths of Black urban youths were being treated as footnotes in conversations about gun violence.
“Both of them took the death of Shane and transformed it into activism,” said Kim A. Snyder, a documentary film director, who became acquainted with Rice and Saylor, while working on her Peabody-winning film about Newtown.
Saylor has pushed for stricter gun laws and has tried to shine a spotlight on the urban violence that has taken so many young Black lives.
“Then it was his own kid,” Snyder said.
Even with the slight rise in homicides in Connecticut’s capital, the state has some of the lowest death rates from guns, according to the Violence Policy Center.
“But we’ve got to do more,” said Jeremy Stein, the executive director of CT Against Gun Violence.
In addition to controlling the supply of guns, Stein wants more done to reduce the demand for firearms while strengthening community programs that promote civility and work to reduce the impulse to reach for a gun when disputes escalate.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/gun-violence-hartford-secret-pierce-74173049450d4915c71a25dc1b0c9f5c