A Colfax Violence: A Brief Update
Violence continues to increase along East Colfax. I shared about that recently in my post, “By The Blue Chair.” I told you about the stabbing that happened across from our building and about the 22 year old woman who died next to the Radiant Inn, one of our motels.
While I was writing that, news was coming in about a shooting in a park across from Aurora Central High School, just a few blocks south of Colfax. 6 youth were shot there. Then, about a week later, 3 more youth were shot by Hinkley High School, a little further away from our immediate area but still part of the broader North Aurora community.
Then, a week or so after that, 5 youth were shot on the block where our building is, in the parking lot adjacent to ours. Amazingly, none of the 14 youth who were shot died. Praise God for that. But the truth is this: We see violence on Colfax all the time but this move to youth on youth shootings is a newer reality we are dealing with. To this point, we have not seen signs of this in the motels, but it is a small community, so the impact is widespread.
The violence is real, but we are also trying to be proactive to help with solutions. Here are a couple of things that are on our list.
We Pray: Please join us in praying for peace and justice in our neighborhood and for Jesus’ presence to be known.
We Show Up: We continue to be committed to being present in our community, believing that solutions begin with a loving presence even in the middle of violence.
We Partner: We are working with others in the community to seek solutions.
We Protect: We are taking extra precautions with our team of volunteers as we are out. Anyone from our team has freedom to not be out if they feel unsafe. And, we are also, both in the motels and while around the building, increasing our own security and making plans to strengthen that further.
We Help: We are also beginning to collect supplies to be used in to be prepared for an emergency. Police response time is very slow at the moment, so having some supplies allows us to do something that might save the life of someone. You will see below some of the supplies and their cost. If God nudges you to give for something on the list, we would appreciate that.
Blessings,
Shawn
A donation of $95 will fund the purchase of Naloxone (Narcan). Our goal: 10 donations
A donation of $70 will fund the purchase of a TAC+PAC stop the bleed kit. Our goal: 10 kits
A donation of $700 will fund the training of our building director in Active Violence Emergency training so that we can provide training for our staff, volunteers, and community friends.