‘Can’t have any more lives lost.’ Lexington leaders identify causes of homicide spike
After five homicides in the last two weeks and another shooting that left the victim “struggling for his life,” Lexington leaders acknowledged Thursday that the city has a gun violence problem.
Lexington has had 24 homicides this year. Twenty of those were shootings. Seven were teens. Five of those teen deaths occurred in the last month, and four have come in the last two weeks. The victim of Thursday’s shooting who had life-threatening injuries is also a teenager, police said.
“We can’t have any more of our future thrown away,” Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers said. “We can’t have any more of our young people’s lives lost.”
Weathers said a lot of the recent shootings are not random. They have occurred when teenagers who know each other got into arguments, he said. Some of the teens involved have gang associations, Weathers said. But the shootings stemmed from issues that weren’t gang-related, and the motivations involved “several different things,” he said.
“If you have gangs here, you have a problem,” Weathers said. “We don’t deny that, but we do try to stay on top of them.”
Lexington doesn’t have “what we traditionally think of as gangs,” Weathers said. But the gang involvement Lexington is dealing with is hard to track, he said. The police department has a gang unit, which investigates potential gang ties in homicides, he said.
With four months remaining in 2020, the city’s 24 homicides are climbing closer to the record of 30, which was set last year.
How are guns getting into teenagers’ hands?
Teenagers involved in the shootings are getting their guns a number of different ways, Weathers said. Guns have been stolen from cars, taken from homes where they weren’t locked up, stolen in burglaries, or bought by older people and given to the teens, he said.
Kentucky law prohibits anyone under the age of 18 from having a gun. The police department has kept in regular contact with local gun dealers and used a partnership with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to help prevent minors from getting guns.
Weathers noted the police department has a campaign to remind people not to leave their firearms unattended in their cars and to lock up their guns at home.
Is COVID-19 making the problem worse?
COVID-19 limitations and restrictions are making it harder for teenagers to stay out of trouble, Mayor Linda Gorton said. Employers, teachers, coaches and mentors who are usually able to identify issues in a teenager’s life are not seeing them as often, Gorton said.
“Jobs are harder to find. Church services and school classes are virtual,” Gorton said. “No football, no basketball, no soccer practice. At every turn, our young people are cut off from the people who might normally help them.”
Gorton asked teenagers to help each other by speaking out about their peers who might be headed down a dangerous road. She also asked adults in the lives of teens to “offer a helping hand” to those struggling.
Businesses that have jobs for teens should contact the city immediately, Gorton said.
Anyone with contact with teens and young adults needs to step up and show teens they have a future, Weathers said. “Some of the ones that we talk to don’t think they have one.”
Mayor’s solutions: Take action, seek help, work with police
Gorton asked Lexington to “unite to turn our children away from a path of violence.” Offering assistance to troubled teens proactively can help prevent shootings, she said. She also urged those affected by gun violence to seek mental health care through the following options, which the city said were free or low cost.
- New Vista Community Mental Health Center
- 24-hour Mental Health Helpline: 1-800-928-8000 (telehealth available)
- For resources and referral sources: www.newvista.org.
- Crisis Text Line: Text “HOME” to 741741 to connect to a trained crisis counselor
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Fayette County Public Schools’ district mental health professionals, school social workers, school counselors, child guidance specialists, and school psychologists are available to provide direct services related to academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs for students. Access services by submitting an electronic help request at https://dna.fcps.net/Needs/Menu or by calling a child’s school. More information about FCPS Mental Health Services can be found at https://www.fcps.net/mental. For self-care resources: https://sites.google.com/fayette.kyschools.us/fcps-virtual-resilience/home.
Gorton also said she wanted people with knowledge of recent homicide cases to cooperate with police, or come forward and speak with investigators. It could “help save a life by stopping a crime before it happens,” she said.
“Now is the time,” Gorton said. “It’s not in two months or three months or four months. It’s now. It’s today.”
Nine of this year’s 24 homicides are open cases, according to the police website, and nine of the 2019 homicides are unsolved.
Police have repeatedly asked those with information on the open homicide cases to contact police by calling (859) 258-3600. Anonymous tips can also be submitted by using a free P3 Tips App available at www.p3tips.com. Information can also be sent anonymously through Bluegrass Crime Stoppers at (859) 253-2020 or www.bluegrasscrimestoppers.com.
“What I’m seeing now is not right,” Weathers said of the deadly gun violence. “You can’t just look for someone to come swooping in with some kind of magic word or some kind of magic program.”
This story was originally published August 27, 2020 at 2:40 PM.