CMPD, Charlotte leaders focus on solutions to gun violence in Queen City

CHARLOTTE — Friday is Nation Gun Violence Awareness Day, and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, alongside leaders in Charlotte, is focusing on solutions.

The groups spoke together Friday morning, just hours after two shootings in the Queen City. The first happened just after 11 p.m. Thursday on Dellinger Drive, right off of Interstate 77 North near Statesville Road Elementary School. MEDIC said one person has life-threatening injuries.

The second happened around 1 a.m. Friday. MEDIC said someone shot showed up to a gas station on North Graham Street. They said that person has life-threatening injuries.

This year alone, CMPD said there have been more than 2,300 victims of gun-related crimes. The number is down 4% from this point last year. Police said 27 of those are victims of deadly shootings, and three of those killed in deadly shootings are under the age of 18.

The department also said this year, there have been more than 400 juvenile victims of violent crimes involving guns and 90 juvenile suspects.

CMPD joined local leaders Friday to raise awareness about gun violence in our city. Chief Johnny Jennings spoke specifically about teens and gun violence.

“We just have to be better parents, and we have to make sure that we know that what they see on TV, and what they play on video games, is not reality,” he said.

Channel 9’s crime reporter Hunter Sáenz was in the room for that conversation. He heard emotional stories from people in our community, including one mother who lost her son to a shooting.

“He was loving, he was so loyal, he was so giving,” Clydia Hemingway said. “He had dreams.”

She was talking about her son Donqwavias Davis, whose dreams were cut short in 2019. He was shot to death at an apartment complex steps away from UNC Charlotte on May 1, 2019.

“Too many lives are being taken at the hands of someone pulling the trigger senselessly,” Hemingway said.

It’s why and other local leaders are working to spare others from her deep pain. Leaders are calling on everyone to help.

“We have to ask ourselves why is this acceptable? Why are we allowing this to happen?” asked CMPD’s Willie Ratchford.

“We need to teach our children to respect each other and we need to model that behavior,” Chief Jennings said.

“It is our burden to bear,” Ratchford said.

It’s a burden Avery Faucett is trying to fix. He runs Hope 4 Humanity, a nonprofit that gets kids to put down the guns and pick up the weights. Having lost his own dreams to drugs and alcohol, and having lost two friends to gun violence, this work is personal for Faucett.

“To help the young men and women stay off the streets,” he said.

He described the boots on the ground work that these leaders, as well as Hemingway, say are needed to help curb the violence.

Faucett and other community nonprofits say they are frustrated because they are underfunded. They are calling on the city and county to pump more money into programs like theirs if we want to see a difference.

There’s no quick fix, but the bottom line is, it’s on all of us to fix.

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