Kids shooting kids: Teens at war
On average, one Columbus teen is a victim of gun violence every day, and about half are assaulted by other teens.
The crack of a gunshot woke the child, who saw his father bleeding from his belly but alive. It was the 3-year-old’s first brush with gun violence.
By the time he was 11, his cousin had lent him a gun. He felt powerful walking around his South Linden neighborhood with the chrome pistol in his pocket.
At 15, he bought his own gun for $50 and took it to a fight. For protection, maybe to shoot someone, he said. But he got caught with it and was locked up.
“I used to feel grown and everything with a gun. It was crazy how it makes you feel,” said the boy, who spent his 16th birthday this summer in the Central Ohio Youth Center in Marysville, where the state won’t allow inmates to be quoted by name.
But the guns are not just for show.
Last year, a Columbus resident younger than 20 was shot, robbed, threatened or kidnapped with a gun every day on average — more than 400 victims in all, according to records kept by the Ohio Department of Public Safety.
Columbus police data show that half of the offenses were committed by other teens.
Thousands of Columbus children don’t know life without guns: Shots heard outside bedroom windows. Weapons stashed in waistbands of men on the corner. Uncles, brothers and fathers killed by bullets.
When they’re older, they start losing their friends to violence and sometimes pick up a gun themselves.
“Shoot or die,” explained one South Side 15-year-old, who would give only his nickname, “ Staino."
In some Columbus neighborhoods, gun violence is like cancer: Everyone knows someone who has died of it. But there’s no Pelotonia or Race for the Cure for this epidemic.
“It’s expensive to let this problem just continue to go on and on,” said Deanna Wilkinson, an Ohio State University professor who has published research on youth violence. “Maybe you don’t have to drive through this neighborhood or know any of these kids personally, but you’re paying for this societal neglect of a problem.”
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Most of the teens and young adults The Dispatch spoke with over the past five months told the same story: Guns and shootings are part of the neighborhood fabric. Treatment for their trauma is not.
A study by Nationwide Children’s Hospital in 2000 found that half of all firearms-related injuries to children and teens happened in four ZIP codes, and Columbus police said not much has changed in the years since. Those areas:
• 43203, north of E. Broad Street and south of I-670 on the Near East Side.
• 43205, south of E. Broad Street and north of E. Livingston Avenue on the Near East Side.
• 43206, south of E. Livingston Avenue and north of Frebis Avenue on the South Side.
• 43207, south of Frebis Avenue to the Franklin County line on the South Side.
These are struggling areas. In 43203, for example, more than half of the households live below the poverty level, according to 2010 census data. Thirty percent of the housing units are vacant. Nearly 9 in 10 births are to unmarried women.
In 43205, east of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, 40 percent of households are below the poverty level, and more than a quarter of the houses are vacant.
43206 was in the spotlight this summer after a week of violence involving teens who live there. Devonere Simmonds, 17, is accused of shooting five people, killing three.
After eluding police for several days, Simmonds and 18-year-old Nathaniel Brunner, also from the South Side, were captured in Dayton, but only after getting a ride from a State Highway Patrol trooper and shooting and carjacking a Virginia man at a Madison County truck stop.
Apart from the crimes that Simmonds is accused of, the neighborhood was the site of 42 felonious or aggravated assaults, 164 robberies and one homicide in 2011 and 2012, according to police statistics.
Violence is “a continuous cycle,” said Cecil Ahad, the president of Men for the Movement, a youth-advocacy and mentoring group. “These young people think they’re in a war. … We’re in a war just like Iraq or Afghanistan.”
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And many have post-traumatic stress disorder — a condition that, left untreated, desensitizes generations to violence, the Rev. Frederick LaMarr said.
He is pastor of Family Missionary Baptist Church on the South Side, and he has preached, marched and mentored as part of his campaign to reach young people and help them take a different path from many of their peers.
He knows the challenges that face neighborhoods with recurring violence. When a student dies tragically at a suburban high school, for example, grief counselors are there the next day. But when violence is routine, less attention is paid to how it affects young people, he said.
“You’re seeing family members get killed, and you got to deal with that trauma,” LaMarr said. “ There’s no post-traumatic stress (treatment) where they can deal with this.”
At the Central Ohio Youth Center in Marysville, about 90 percent of the inmates have post-traumatic stress disorder, much of it from witnessing violence, said Emily Giametta, a licensed therapist and the detention center’s clinical administrator.
“These kids at a very young age have seen people shot, killed, brutalized,” she said. “At an early age, they’re taught it’s really not safe for them.”
Ahad sees it, too.
“A lot of these kids are numb,” he said. “It’s this culture of death.”
When teens pick up a gun, they say there are reasons — power, protection, an ego boost. When they shoot a gun, however, reason seems to go out the window.
Studies of youth violence have found that most conflicts are sparked by such things as petty comments or actions, rather than drugs or gang warfare.
In a study of more than 400 New York City males who were interviewed in the late 1990s, Wilkinson, the OSU researcher, found that about 40 percent of disputes were over identity and respect, followed by sexual competition
(21 percent), the drug business (16 percent) and robberies (14 percent).
“Somebody could shoot somebody over a pack of gum or a pack of cigarettes,” said a 17-year-old from Dayton who is locked up on gun charges at the Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facility.
A slight that likely would be brushed off by most adults is a matter of ultimate offense to kids who have little more in life than their self-respect.
“Your threshold for what you accept or what you let go of changes when the only thing you have is your pride and your manhood,” Wilkinson said. “You’re going to fight for it differently.”
Those beefs and boasts are broadcast and fueled by social media.
“They’re trying to show off,” said Lee-Divine McCrae, 16, who was shot in the leg outside Walnut Ridge High School during a fight in March. “They don’t want anyone saying they’re weak, they’re lame.”
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The Columbus Police Division’s gang unit spends most of its time with youths ages 14 to 19, said Cmdr. Michael Woods. But these aren’t organized gangs; they’re more like “bad cliques” of teens who sometimes commit violence, Woods said.
There’s no initiation or stranger violence. “That’s television,” he said.
But there often is conflict between the groups. Kaewaun Coleman, a 15-year-old member of the Squad gang, was shot and killed after school near Linden-McKinley STEM Academy in January. Two members of the PTSQ gang have been charged in his death.
Even when violence is committed by a kid linked to a gang, it’s not necessarily related to gang membership, Woods said.
“It could be someone has access to a gun (and) someone flirted with someone’s girlfriend, someone stole from someone, someone felt they were disrespected.”
The gang “is not the reason for the crime,” he said.
Many of the groups are kids who have known one another since kindergarten. As they get older, they link themselves with a name.
“You’ll find the friendships have oftentimes been in place long before gang affiliation,” said Bernard Houston, the chief probation officer at Franklin County Juvenile Court.
“All it is is a group of people trying to look good,” said a 17-year-old boy on the South Side.
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Even those kids who are victims of gun violence say they understand why their peers carry weapons.
Jaymone Smith, 16, was at a party for her cousin in North Linden in January when a fight broke out. The club owner fired his gun, she said, and boys her age started firing back.
A bullet hit her left ring finger, where a small scar remains. Another 17-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy also were wounded.
“It was scary,” Smith said. “I stopped going to parties.”
As for teens carrying guns: “They need to, ’cause kids, if you beefing with someone, they see you, they going to kill you,” she said. Even an errant bump at a party can lead to gunfire.
“Someone might do something crazy that night,” said the 16-year-old who is locked up in Marysville for carrying a gun.
“My friend got elbowed in his nose when he was dancing, and his brothers and him start trying to fight everybody. And they just started shooting.”
Nobody was hit, and no one called police.
Because of such lack of reporting, official numbers likely undercount violence among youths in Columbus. But police say the numbers are declining.
Five years ago, 383 people younger than 20 were victims of a gun crime. By last year, the number had dropped to 264, according to Columbus police statistics and Dispatch records.
The state Department of Public Safety shows a higher number — 401 — for last year. (The city and state numbers are different because city data are more preliminary and come from initial reports.)
Across Ohio, 2,355 teens were victims of a gun crime last year, according to the state numbers. Of Ohio’s 88 counties, 55 reported at least one gun-crime victim between 1 and 19 years old.
Young people in big cities are particularly vulnerable. Columbus, with 401 gun crimes, was second to Cleveland (541) and followed by Cincinnati (370) and Toledo (273).
By rate, however, Columbus fares better. Worst is Cleveland, with 97 gun incidents for every 10,000 residents younger than 20, then comes Cincinnati (95), Toledo (67), the state rate (64) and Columbus (39).
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For the most part, guns are a boys’ game, say the teens who spoke toThe Dispatch. Girls fight, too, but not as deadly or with guns. Among shooting victims younger than 20 in Columbus last year, 74 percent were male.
In many neighborhoods, guns are easy to obtain, several youths toldThe Dispatch. Fifty bucks gets you a “little gun,” usually a .22-caliber. A “chopper” — an M16 or an AK-47 that will “chop you down” — costs more but isn’t hard to find.
Money isn’t the only way, either. Some steal guns from family members or during a break-in, or guns are passed along on loan from other teens.
“Someone will give you a gun before they give you some money,” said a 17-year-old from Cleveland, who is locked up in juvenile detention in Circleville.
And a gun can get you money. According to Columbus data, nearly 62 percent of the gun crimes committed against kids last year were robberies.
The adult admonition to settle a score with fists instead of firearms falls on deaf ears, many teens said.
“Everyone’s scared to put down the gun because they don’t know how to fight,” explained Staino, the 15-year-old from the South Side.