Roughly 200 family members, friends and classmates of two teenage shooting victims gathered at Dugan Best Park Saturday night for a candlelight vigil. The day before National Gun Violence Awareness Day, people in the Owensboro community were mourning two more lives lost.
June is National Violence Awareness Month and Owensboro resident Alazia Baker originally planned an awareness event at Smothers Park as a way to remember her brother, but local gun violence caused her plans to change.
A shooting in Whitesville claimed two more victims and the awareness event turned into a memorial gathering.
Baker said this was her first time organizing an event, but after losing her brother to gun violence in November 2017, she felt the need to give back.
“I have not only lost my brother to gun violence but also friends,” she said. “I’ve seen friends lose friends. I just felt like this was something I needed to do. I obviously didn’t know it would hit so close to home today.”
Canvases lined the Dugan Best park shelter with names of local shooting victims — Jasper Brown, Amarius Winstead, Jerard Fountain, Devin Fields and more. The gathering also included people sharing memories of those lost to gun violence and a balloon release in honor of the ones lost.
In the future, Baker said she wants to grow the awareness for gun violence and just bring peace to the community.
“It’s a touchy subject that either hits home or it doesn’t,” Baker said. “It’s becoming more of a problem every single day. We’re all in this together. There is too much negativity — we have to bring the positive. We can’t expect anything to change if we’re not willing to do anything about it.”
