MATTHEW TULLY

Tully: Life on a city block marred by violence

Shots ring out in a neighborhood filled with children. But “nobody cares,” one mom tells columnist Matthew Tully. Is she right?

Matthew Tully

The police cars and TV cameras were gone, and that made it possible to see what life was normally like on a block around the corner from 30th Street and Keystone Avenue.

Driving past the site of Wednesday’s double homicide on Caroline Avenue, so many images stood out. Directly across the street from the small white home where two men died from gunshots, a pink child’s bicycle sat in another front yard, a few feet from a kid’s football. Half a block to the north, a brightly colored playset stood in a church’s small, fenced yard. Around the corner, a Boys & Girls Club bustled with children, as it does every weekday.

Amy Rios, a server at a popular Downtown restaurant, sat on the front porch of the 1,500-square-foot home she has rented for the past 18 months. It is four doors down from the site of the shootings, a fact that underscored her decision long ago to make her children play inside, even on nice summer days.

A blue minivan sat in front of her home. As I drove around, I saw several minivans. Along with a lot of old-timers who have been in the neighborhood for decades, Rios said, there are a lot of families like hers on the block. She has six kids; her next-door neighbor has seven.

“But we’re in the ‘hood,” she said, “so nobody cares about this place,”

Rios recalled the scene from 24 hours earlier. She’d arrived home from an appointment to find her block filled with police cars and people milling about. The neighbor across the street told her about the shootings and she said she saw one of the victim’s bodies in front of the house. In a five-sentence statement provided to the media, police reported finding the other victim inside the house.

Rios said the neighborhood is normally quiet. She pointed to the nicely manicured lawns in front of the one-story homes that pepper the block. But occasional bursts of trouble have her wishing she could afford to move her family elsewhere. She told me about other incidents near the scene of the shootings in recent months, about outsiders who cause trouble and the occasional gunfire and fights she and her kids hear from inside their house.

“This was expected to happen,” she said. “But it just really stinks. I hate being here. But how do you get out? Everywhere good is so expensive.”

Hearing a hard-working mom say that is heartbreaking. It’s a reminder that every shooting, every act of violence, has many victims. But 24 hours later, for most of us, the memory of this one was already fading.

At 30th Street and Caroline Avenue, 63-year-old Yvonne Loomis rode her scooter home from a food pantry hosted by a local church. She’d seen a report about the double homicide on one of the local TV stations. Details were scarce, but the victims were later identified as Mark Secrest, Jr., 25, and John Easley, 27.

“Two people got killed,” Loomis said. “I know there’s a lot going on these days, but come on. What’s up with this?”

A few minutes later, a 60-year-old man who lives across the street from the crime scene walked to a nearby Family Dollar. He defended his neighborhood, saying it was normally quiet and filled with good people.

“It’s just so strange,” he said, growing nervous when I asked for his name. I apologized and he smiled, shaking my hand and telling me to write about how nice his block looked. That is exactly what stood out that morning. That, and all the things — the basketball hoops and minivans — that made clear how many children call it home.

On Rios’ porch, I’d asked her what message she’d like delivered to those in charge of the city. She shook her head and said she didn’t know what to say.

“All I know is that there are too many people with guns that have no business having them,” she said. “I support the right of people to carry a gun. But we need to do more to keep them away from people who shouldn’t have them.”

Her phone started ringing and Rios excused herself, heading into a rental she hopes to leave one day soon. For now, she and her children continue to call it home.

Thank you for reading. Please follow me on Twitter: @matthewtully .