Khadija Hussain Photo
Some 40 neighbors and relatives of three young Quinnipiac Meadows shooting victims gathered to march in the sweltering humidity Saturday in commemoration of three young Quinnipiac Meadows murder victims, and to raise awareness for the horrors of gun violence in New Haven.
Family members led the way as the march set out from Weybossett Street, where Deveron McLaughlin, 32, was shot dead last December.
One of the three victims, Javier Martinez, a popular Common Ground High School student and community environmental worker, was also shot dead in December. A month after his death, Durrell Patrick Law, who was 20 years old, was the victim of a homicide in the same area.
Saturday’s march aimed to show support for the families and the police department, as the cases still remain unsolved.
From Weybossett Street, the march continued to the site of Martinez’s death near Hemingway Avenue, then onto the location of Law’s murder. Police accompanied the marchers in squad cars and blocked streets for the march.
Martinez’s mother, Zaida, proposed and organized the march on what would have been Martinez’s 19th birthday. At the site of his death, the family released 19 balloons into the air in his honor. (Zaida is pictured on the march with the balloons, accompanied by Javier’s younger siblings and his grandmother, Sonia.)
“We want justice,” Zaida said of the unsolved case. “It isn’t fair. Javier was such a good kid— he was an angel. It was such a cruel thing to do. He would have been a senior last year, and I went to his graduation, but he wasn’t there.”
Jazmine Zamora, Javier Martinez’s second cousin, saidt teenagers like Javier are endangered by other kids their own age.
“We really need to stop young kids from having access to guns. It means that teenagers can get shot, over stupid arguments. There’s a lot of peer pressure to get guns, and be tough, but you have to stand up to that,” she said.
Another cousin, Jazmine Cardona, a junior at Platt Tech High School, said she can relate to young homicide victims like Javier. “It’s so horrible, especially for high school students. We’re so young— we have our lives ahead of us. Javier was going to have an amazing future, and it’s so sad that that’s been destroyed. We want to raise awareness so that this doesn’t happen again in the future, because what happened definitely could have been prevented.”
Durrell Law’s grandmother, Nora Lacks, said she is fed up with the homicide rates in New Haven. (Click here for a story about how death came to her door three times in less than a year.)
“We want the killings to stop,” she said. “It just doesn’t make sense. How can you take a life that you can’t give back?”
Pastor Troy McNulty (who’s married to Lacks’ niece) was also marching. He expressed concern for all homicide victims in New Haven. McNulty conducted a short service (pictured) at the site of Martinez’s death, and spoke directly to the citizens of New Haven, including the shooters.
“These are not just numbers for us,” he said. “These are not just statistics. These are our families, and we are sick of this. To the young men in this city, I am asking you to put your guns down, to change your lives, to change your direction. We are sick of burying young people out here. We are sick of the foolishness that is going on in these streets. Enough is enough. And so I am asking the residents of this city to change the way we think as a community. We must stand collectively, with a moral outrage about what’s going on in our city.”
As he spoke, marchers broke down in tears, crying for their loved ones and the loss of so many loved ones all over the city.
Ron Codiani, the public safety committee chair of the Quinnipiac East Management Team (QEMT), addressed the group as well. He encouraged people to speak out against gang members and gun violence perpetrators.
“We are not afraid,” he told the crowd. “Whoever killed these unarmed men— they were cowards. They deserve to spend their lives in jail, but we’ve got to help catch them first. If you see something, say something.”
