Local Teen Shot Dead; Community Considers Steps to Curb Violence
December 15, 2009
By RACHEL WALDHOLZ
After two months without a single reported shooting, the 48th Precinct saw four shootings in the space of just four weeks in November, including a series of shootings in Crotona on Nov. 16 which began outside a playground and ended hours later in the courtyard of an apartment building, leaving a 19-year-old dead and two others wounded.
At about 5 p.m. on Nov. 16, Sensei Will Lawton was standing on the basketball court behind the Mary Mitchell Family and Youth Center, where dozens of children in the center’s afterschool program were playing, when he suddenly heard gunfire. Three figures appeared just outside the playground’s fence, running up the street, “just blazing away,” said Lawton, who runs the center’s afterschool martial arts program.
“[It was] like watching a western in your living room on a 50-inch television,” he said.
SENSEI WILL LAWTON OF THE MARY MITCHELL CENTER, AND SHAREYANA, WHO LIVES IN THE BUILDING WHERE A FATAL SHOOTING TOOK PLACE. (PHOTO: R. WALDHOLZ)
Community residents said Rivas was involved in the earlier shooting and was apparently the target. Residents thought both shootings were motivated by a drug-related dispute.
DelValle’s family and friends said he was an innocent bystander.
The police arrested Phillip Carr, 17, within minutes of the second shooting, said Deputy Inspecor William McSorley, commanding officer of the 48th Precinct.
The Nov. 16 shooting followed two earlier shooting incidents that month, one on Beaumont Avenue and 183rd Street, and one on 179th Street and Boston Road. It was followed by a shooting on Nov. 28, in which a 16-year-old girl was shot in the back but survived.
That brings the total number of reported shooting incidents in the precinct this year to 31, and the total number of homicides to seven. Police said both numbers are lower than last year, when there were 41 reported shootings by the end of November, and 11 homicides.
Community Response
The shootings on their block prompted the Mary Mitchell Center to call an emergency meeting of elected officials, police and community organizations on Nov. 24 to discuss measures to prevent future violence.
The meeting brought together local clergy and organizations including the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance, and Mothers on the Move, along with the Rev. Joseph McShane, president of Fordham University, City Councilman Joel Rivera, and representatives of other elected officials, the mayor’s office and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Representatives from the youth-led organizations Sistas and Brothas United and United Playaz also attended, many of them local high school students.
MARY MITCHELL CENTER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR HEIDI HYNES WITH VICTOR, WHO ATTENDS THE CENTER
It was in some ways a microcosm of the larger debate over what to do in neighborhoods plagued by violence.
McSorley emphasized that police need more cooperation from local residents, especially in reporting illegal guns. “I’ll tell you, from our point of view, we don’t get enough information from the people who live here,” he said.
Representatives of the mayor’s office, as well as from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, praised Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ambitious commitment to gun control. The mayor has pursued illegal gun dealers across state lines and formed a coalition of cities to push for federal gun control legislation.
Representatives of community organizations stressed that while policing and gun control are important, the violence was connected to larger struggles – for living wage jobs at the Kingsbridge Armory, for instance, which some said would provide an alternative to the drug dealing that fuels much of the violence.
“The overall thing is the government needs to invest in poor neighborhoods,” said Heidi Hynes, executive director of the Mary Mitchell Center. “We have a culture of violence because we have generational, concentrated poverty.”
Adolfo Abreu, a Sistas and Brothas United teen leader, said, “It’s not enough, taking someone’s guns away from them, because there’s still chains, there’s still scissors, there’s still fists. The violence will still be there. We need to have youth programs. Not just a gun [control] bill, we need a youth program bill.”
Staff at the Mary Mitchell Center expressed frustration that the city – and, they noted especially, its billionaire mayor – can’t find the resources to sustain community programs that work.
Carr, the suspect in the shooting, used to come by the Mary Mitchell Center, said Lawton.
“He was a good kid. We know that kid. All he did was play basketball,” Lawton said, adding that Carr’s arrest was part of a common pattern, when afterschool programs for teens lose funding
“The money was cut, we lose sight of him, next thing we know he’s in prison or in a coffin.”
Considering What’s Next
After the meeting, Hynes considered next steps. “I really think we need to know: what’s every church doing? What’s every school doing? What’s every tenants association doing?” she said. “I think Crotona needs to create a report – the state of Crotona report – that has our own recommendations” on what the community needs.
But then, she said, the city needs to fund it.
To that end, Hynes and the Mary Mitchell Center have invited Mayor Bloomberg to live in, and work from, 2000 Prospect Ave. for the month of February. They plan to press their case with a rally at City Hall or Borough Hall on Dec. 16.
What we need from the mayor, said Hynes, is “for him to want for us what he wants for himself.”
“Most of the people with the resources would sooner saw off their own arm than live in 2000 Prospect,” said Hynes, “So it’s hard for them to know how bad it is.”
“To be aware, you must be present,” she wrote in a letter to the mayor last week, “and so we believe you should come and live with us.”
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[...] Center’s playground, at 2007 Mapes Ave., where dozens of children were playing. Later that day, 19-year-old Felix DelValle was shot dead and two others were injured in the courtyard of nearby 2000 Prospect [...]