Two HBCU homecoming shootings, and the call to reach young people sooner

What happened

A shooting near Florida A&M University in Tallahassee on Saturday night, after FAMU’s homecoming game against the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, injured 12 people, Capital B News reported. Police said it stemmed from an altercation on Perry Street near Bragg Memorial Stadium, according to Capital B. Six of the injured were children, the youngest reportedly 11. A 15-year-old has been charged.

ABC News, citing Tallahassee police, reported that detectives believe the dispute was between people who knew one another, that none of the victims appear to have been the intended targets, and that more arrests are possible. The teen has not been convicted.

Capital B reported that alumni, students and faculty were quick to note the violence was not on campus, and that others heard a call to action. FAMU President Marva Johnson said in a video message that she shares the community’s “outrage and profound sadness at the senseless and despicable shooting.” Former FAMU coach Willie Simmons, whose son was injured in a 2021 shooting at FAMU, told the Tallahassee Democrat he started a gun violence initiative in 2019 and said “clearly not enough is being done,” Capital B reported.

The same day, two men were hospitalized with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds after an altercation near Henderson Hall on Virginia Union University’s campus in Richmond, Capital B reported, citing police. A 22-year-old Richmond man, one of the two, is charged with attempted murder and a firearm count; investigators believe he shot himself accidentally. Capital B reported it is not known whether he is affiliated with the university.

Our reflection

Homecoming at an HBCU is a family reunion with a marching band. Those campuses exist because this country once shut the door, and every fall the people who walked through them come back to say we made it. On Saturday, children were among the wounded on a street outside the stadium, and a 15-year-old, whose name we will not print and whose heart we cannot see, now faces serious charges. Somewhere in that same night, a coach and his wife who already know that phone call had to live it again.

Police said the dispute was between people who knew each other. That detail should stop all of us. Jesus said anger nursed against a brother already stands under judgment (Matthew 5:21 to 22). He found the violence long before the trigger, in the grudge we feed and the disrespect we replay at 2 a.m. Most of us have never held a gun in anger. Plenty of us have let an old wound make a decision for us. A teenager has had far fewer years than we have to learn what to do with his.

On the night He was arrested, a fight broke out in the garden and one of His own drew a sword. Jesus said, “No more of this,” and healed the wounded man’s ear (Luke 22:51). Days earlier He had wept over a city full of festival crowds, because they did not know the things that make for peace. He still grieves when our celebrations turn to fear, and He still walks into the fight with healing. Grace for a young person accused of this does not cancel justice for the children who were hit. The cross holds both, and the empty tomb says neither story is over.

Change here is practical. Violence intervention puts trusted adults, many of whom came through the same streets, into young people’s disputes before those disputes reach a weekend crowd. That is what our JCVI work exists for: we reach young people at first contact, before a record exists, and we stay through re-entry. Homecoming is planned months ahead. Mentors and interrupters can be planned too, on the blocks around the stadium as well as inside the gates. HBCU alumni are some of the most organized people in the country. If the teenagers who live near campus were treated as part of the family, mentored and hired for game day, more of their conflicts could reach a grown man before they reach a gun.

Coach Simmons is right that more has to be done. This week, take one step toward the young people who live where the party happens.

Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!

Luke 19:42

Source: Capital B News, “One Homecoming Weekend, Two Shootings Near HBCUs Leave More Than a Dozen Hurt”