Halloween weekend shootings leave at least 13 dead and 92 hurt, CNN reports

What happened

CNN reported that at least 13 people were killed and 92 injured in shootings across the US over Halloween weekend. The network called its count preliminary, based in part on the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, and said the list was “not exhaustive.” NBC News, in its own tally, reported at least 12 killed and more than 60 injured across seven states.

Many of the shootings happened where crowds had gathered for events on the calendar, according to CNN. Police said a 31-year-old woman, whom family members described as pregnant, was killed at a Spirit Halloween store in Fairfield, California. In Birmingham, Alabama, one person was killed and eight wounded outside Legion Field after the Magic City Classic, and Mayor Randall Woodfin said a 17-year-old was taken into custody. In Delaware, state police said someone fired into an outdoor party in Ellendale, killing a 17-year-old girl; about an hour later, six people were shot near the University of Delaware.

CNN reported that police in Dallas and in Fayetteville, Arkansas, had already added officers for Halloween crowds. “We had more presence out here, and this was something that we were ramped up for,” Dallas Police Chief Daniel Comeaux told reporters after three shootings in Deep Ellum left four people dead and at least 15 injured.

In Jacksonville, the sheriff’s office said shootings at two Halloween parties killed a 17-year-old girl and a 20-year-old man and injured 11 others, and police said both began as fights that led to gunfire, CNN reported. “This is not normal,” Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer said in a statement cited by CNN. Several of the police accounts CNN cited were preliminary, and the report did not establish motives in most cases.

Our reflection

Two 17-year-old girls went out for Halloween and did not come home, one standing in line for a party in Jacksonville and the other at an outdoor party in a small Delaware town. In California, a woman was killed while buying a costume on a Friday night. This morning their families are planning funerals, and the friends who stood beside them carry something nobody their age should carry.

Jacksonville police said both parties there started with a fight. That part is not foreign to any of us. Jesus said anger in the heart already stands under judgment (Matthew 5:21 to 22). Plenty of us know the heat of being disrespected in front of people, and the old voice that says you cannot walk away and still be a man. That voice lies. Put it in a young man with a pistol and it kills.

Our other sin is quieter. We have gotten used to this. The Gun Violence Archive has counted nearly 400 mass shootings this year, and most of us scrolled past the last hundred. Luke tells us Jesus came over the hill, saw Jerusalem and wept, because the city did not know what would bring it peace. Then he walked in anyway, all the way to a cross and out of a tomb, so that death would not have the last word over a city or over a 17-year-old girl.

Nobody was surprised by the calendar. Halloween night and an eight-decade rivalry game were on the schedule months ago, and Dallas and Fayetteville put more officers out. A patrol car on the corner still cannot know which two young men have been beefing since Thursday.

Violence interrupters can. They are men and women from the same blocks, many with a past of their own, and they hear about the beef early. Then they walk into the party and talk somebody down. Hospital-based programs put one of them at the bedside of a young person who was just shot, before anyone starts talking about getting even. Every city ought to be able to say whether those teams are on the schedule, and on the payroll, for the nights we can already circle. Thanksgiving weekend and New Year’s Eve are already on the calendar. So is every block party next July.

That is the ground our JCVI work stands on. In Miami, where we are based, and in our hubs in Chicago and Houston, we reach young people at first contact, before a record exists, and stay with them through re-entry. When it works there is no headline. The party ends at 2 a.m. and everybody goes home.

Thanksgiving weekend is less than four weeks away. Find the people doing this work where you live and back them before then, and carry the families in Jacksonville and Ellendale in prayer this week.

If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace.

Luke 19:42

Source: CNN, “Violent Halloween weekend in US with more than a dozen killed, over 90 injured in shootings”