An Indianapolis children’s hospital now meets young gunshot patients at the bedside

What happened

Riley Children’s Health in Indianapolis has launched what it calls the state’s first program of its kind, a hospital-linked violence intervention program for young victims of gun violence and their families, FOX59 reported. According to the station, the effort is led by the hospital’s Office of Community & Child Health. It uses a hybrid model that pairs Riley’s clinical care with community-based violence intervention. Patients treated for gunshot wounds and other penetrating trauma may be connected to services aimed at what shapes recovery outside the hospital: social and emotional strain, and the environment a young patient goes home to.

FOX59 reported that the hospital’s youngest gunshot patient so far in 2026 was one month old. Mae Sandberg of Riley Children’s Health told the station, “It doesn’t end once we have discharged them from the hospital.” FOX59 noted that a young victim and family can be weighed down by grief and fear, and by the pressure of retaliation. The station also spoke with Cheree Sampson, who said, “Me and my boys’ lives have changed tremendously.”

WISH-TV reported that the program launched Thursday and that Riley, a Level 1 trauma center, joins 11 other U.S. pediatric hospitals with violence intervention programs. Sandberg told WISH-TV that 14% of the hospital’s gunshot patients are under 10, and that “our median age just for this year is 15.” According to WISH-TV, the community partners include Indy Peace, VOICES Corp, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Indianapolis and Struggle Made Us.

Our reflection

Start with the number nobody can hold steady: one month old. Every reader flinches at that. Now take the other figure from the same reporting, a median age of 15, and watch what happens inside you. For plenty of good church people the sympathy cools a few degrees. We start wondering what he was into. Before long someone asks where his father was. That quiet sorting of wounded children into innocent and suspect is sin, and it sits as comfortably in a pew as anywhere else. A 15-year-old with a gunshot wound is still a child in a hospital gown.

He is also lying there making a decision. FOX59 named the weight he carries, and retaliation sits right beside the fear and the grief. Somewhere between surgery and discharge a young man asks whether he will be safe on his own block, and whether being a man means answering back. Anybody who has sat with young men after a shooting knows how fast an untended wound turns into a plan. The family in the chairs by the bed is fighting its own version of that war.

Jesus told a story about a man left bleeding on the Jericho road. He told it to a lawyer who wanted a smaller definition of neighbor. Two religious men passed by, each with his reasons. A Samaritan, the last man the crowd wanted as the hero, knelt in the dirt and bound the wounds. Then Luke records the part we skip. The next day he paid the innkeeper and promised to come back. Mercy in that story has a follow-up visit.

That second day is what Sandberg was describing when she said care does not end at discharge. The bedside matters because it is the one moment a system reliably has a hurt young person in front of it, scared and reachable, before the street gets a vote. A hospital cannot carry the rest alone, and Riley built its program with community groups who know the blocks these kids go home to.

The same conviction sits under our Juvenile Community Violence Intervention work at We The Revolt: meet a young person at first contact, before a record exists, and stay through what comes after. Indianapolis is not one of our cities. We are based in Miami, with hubs in Chicago and Houston, and every one of those cities has trauma bays where a teenager will wake up tonight deciding who he will be. The people who walk into those rooms need a church standing behind them, with money and with presence.

If your sympathy cooled at fifteen, do not bury that. Bring it to the cross, where Jesus died for people the respectable had already written off, and ask him for new eyes. The empty tomb says a boy in a hospital bed is not finished. Neither are you.

Here are a few ways to stand with those workers and families this week.

He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.

Luke 10:34

Source: FOX59, “​Riley Children's Health announces launch of Hospital-Linked Violence Intervention Program”