Several days after a spate of shootings in Pittsburgh’s eastern suburbs left two teens dead and one injured, CeCe Russell stood on a Wilkinsburg street corner and recalled her first brush with gun violence.
The Homewood woman was still a little girl when her friend was killed in their neighborhood.
“I was 9 and didn’t understand it,” Russell, 31, an outreach worker with the violence prevention group Cure Violence East, said Thursday. “Kids shouldn’t be introduced to violence at that young of an age. Some adults still don’t know how to deal with death.”
On Easter Sunday, only a few blocks from where Russell was standing on Penn Avenue, a 16-year-old boy was shot dead while standing outside a house on Hill Avenue. Police said Kevin Wilson, a sophomore at Westinghouse Academy in Homewood, was an innocent bystander who was struck by a bullet during a fight nearby that didn’t involve him.
The next night, Jeramyah Pollard, 16, was killed and another teen injured during a double shooting in Braddock.
And just after midnight Thursday, Jamair Coachman, 18, of Penn Hills died four months after being shot in the back in Pittsburgh’s Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar neighborhood.
Hours later, Russell was walking alongside a dozen Cure Violence East staffers and volunteers, most clad in bright, construction-zone-orange hoodies engaged in a “shooting response.”
Cure Violence East hand out pamphlets on community resources to pedestrians and motorists stopped at traffic lights. Sometimes, they go door-to-door.
“We need to invest in these kinds of preventative measures,” said Ashley Comans, a Wilkinsburg school board member and wife of the borough’s mayor. She joined the group as it coalesced in front of a beer distributor shop. “We need to invest in these communities. If residents feel that no one cares, they’re not gonna care.”
Upward trend
Some of the deaths reflect an upward trend of gun violence involving juveniles locally and nationally — even as homicides overall are declining, experts told TribLive.
Gun offenses among juveniles nationwide — which includes homicides and non-fatal shootings — climbed more than 20% from 2016 to 2022, according to a study in progress by Brendan Lantz, a Florida criminologist.
“What’s most interesting is that we’re looking at juvenile offending, as a whole, decreasing,” said Lantz, who teaches at Florida State University and received his doctorate from Penn State University. “But there’s been this 21% increase in gun use.”
Wilkinsburg Mayor Dontae Comans said incidents like the Easter Sunday homicide and the March 29 non-fatal shooting of a man on Montier Street sting.
“Kids should be burying their parents, not the other way around,” the mayor said. “We still are trying to be proactive. We try to be on the offense, instead of the defense.”
The Comans have two young children, a son, 1, and a daughter, 4.
“I think (being a parent) further pushes me to be involved,” Ashley Comans said. “A mother’s cry, after losing her child? I don’t want to ever have to understand that myself.”
Hitting close to home
Shayla Holmes, Cure Violence East’s program manager, believes that her group’s efforts are helping to tamp down violence.
Their outreach workers help residents with matters big and small. Sometimes, people need help getting food or steady housing, she said. Other times, kids want assistance finding jobs or getting a driver’s license.
Some work is grittier. Several “violence interrupters” patrol neighborhoods and interact with troubled kids to keep assaults and shootings at bay.
Jaison Johnson, who supervised several violence interrupters, knows homicides can be difficult for the outreach workers.
“Some hit closer to home,” Johnson said. “Sometimes you know the victim.”
Holmes’ chapter serves Wilkinsburg, Penn Hills and two Pittsburgh neighborhoods, Homewood and East Hills.
Johnson said that the numbers show their work is having an impact. There have been 13 homicides and 18 non-fatal shootings in Pittsburgh so far this year, according to Pittsburgh police, down from 16 killings and 20 non-fatal shootings at the same time last year.
Featured Local Businesses
Pittsburgh police did not reply to multiple requests seeking comments on the data.
Homicide numbers also are down in Allegheny County, which has had 15 homicides so far this year outside the city limits. That’s down from 20 through last April 3.
When it comes to violent crimes involving juveniles, Lantz said the verdict is still out on 2024.
Present in the community
Allegheny County Police are investigating the most recent shootings.
Detectives have arrested two women in connection with the Easter Sunday case. Police said they were with a large group of men wielding baseball bats who got into a fight. The women fired guns, according to police, and Kevin Wilson died.
Cure Violence East volunteers on Thursday remembered Wilson as a young entrepreneur who frequently bought cold bottled water and walked Wilkinsburg’s streets to sell it to passersby for a profit.
Sometimes, people would give Kevin a $1 bill and decline the water. At least once, Russell said, she bought a case of bottled water and gave it to Kevin to sell.
Comans, the Wilkinsburg mayor, said to combat gun violence among juveniles, elected leaders and community members must push back against historic disinvestment in towns like his.
“People see when there’s nothing going on,” he told TribLive. “It’s important to be present, too, in the community. I know a lot of people just want to know you’re there for them, no matter who you are.”
Violence prevention also requires intense engagement with younger people, stressed Holmes, the Cure Violence East manager.
“We work with anybody — at any age,” said Holmes, who grew up around Pittsburgh’s East Liberty and Larimer neighborhoods. “But a lot of the people we work with are young. … It’s about connecting the community. We try to mediate and drive down the number of shootings.”
Death on Margaretta Street
On Wednesday night, dozens gathered on Margaretta Street to release balloons into the sky in memory of Jeramyah Pollard, the Braddock shooting victim, who enjoyed rapping and loved his cousins.
The teen’s aunt, Darchelle Thornhill, asked witnesses to cooperate with police, reported TribLive news partner WTAE.
“I want it to be known: My nephew wasn’t that type of kid,” Thornhill said, according to WTAE. “We’re getting justice for Jeramyah Pollard. And I mean that — Jeramyah Pollard will have justice.”
Jeramyah wasn’t the first teen life claimed on Margaretta Street.
Wanda Middlebrook’s grandson, Nazir Parker, was killed there last August. He was 17.
“As a parent, I always have worries,” said Middlebrook, of Pittsburgh. “Every time the kids step out of the house, I worry — to this day. And it’s worse now than it’s ever been.”
Middlebrook said she wants to extend condolences to Jeramyah’s family. Her advice: “They just need to pray and comfort one another.”
Nazir was getting ready to enter his senior year at Woodland Hills High School when he was shot on Aug. 27 around 11 p.m.
An Allegheny County Housing Authority officer was walking nearby when he heard multiple gunshots, police said.
The officer found Nazir and Rimel Williamson, 17, dead in the street.
A third teen — Jerell Rockymore, 16 — was found shot multiple times in a Center Street home. Police later charged him with homicide in Nazir’s and Rimel’s deaths.
But the violence from that incident didn’t end there.
A month later, on Sept. 19, another teen linked to the slaying of Nazir and Rimel — Mohamed Hussein, 15 — was fatally shot in Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood.
Pittsburgh and county police confirmed that Mohamed was present at the earlier shooting in Braddock.
Middlebrook recalled how much Nazir loved and excelled in math — though not always pre-calculus — and liked to play pick-up basketball games on Braddock’s courts.
Before attending Woodland Hills, Nazir earned honor-roll grades at Propel Braddock Hills High School, a public charter school, she said.
He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do after graduation. But, she said, he planned to tour college campuses.
“He was just a nice, fun-loving big brother,” said Middlebrook, whose only daughter raised 17 children, with Nazir the oldest. “How can you say it? He was the one who kept his friends together. … He was always looking out for someone else.”
Nazir would sometimes visit Middlebrook at her Pittsburgh home “just because,” she said. The two talked often.
Featured Local Businesses
He spent the night at Middlebrook’s home shortly before his death and left a lollipop playfully propped up on a bunk bed in the house, she said.
Eight months after Nazir’s death, Middlebrook said, the lollipop is still there.