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Page 8 The Skanner April 4, 2018 News A School Shooting Every Week, One-By-One By Alexa Imani Spencer, Howard University News Service This is the second of a two-part series on the murders of teenagers throughout the U.S. While the nation’s attention is fo- cused on deaths in school shootings, the equivalent number of teenage mur- ders place every week, mostly in African Ameri- can and Hispanic neigh- borhoods with little fan- fare or public debate. To read the first installment in this series, visit www. theskanner.com/news/ usa/26702-a-school-shoot- ing-every-week-one-by- one. WASHINGTON — Ste- ven Slaughter was walk- ing home from the 7-Elev- en store with friends on a Sunday afternoon at the beginning of the year in his southeast Washing- ton neighborhood when it happened. Steven was with two of his friends. It was Janu- ary 14, the eve of the Mar- tin Luther King Jr. Day, and Steven, a 9th grader who dreamed of playing football for a major col- lege, and they were look- ing forward to being out of school Monday for the national holiday. When they got to the 1700 block of Minnesota Avenue, a man who po- lice say is 21-year Antho- ny D. Allen, pulled a gun and tried to rob them. Something went wrong, and Steven was shot sev- eral times. When police arrived at 6:59 p.m., Steven lay bleeding on the ground in front of Garden Me- morial Presbyterian Church—just a block from his house. Medics took him to a local hospi- tal, but not long after his arrival he was dead, and with him the dreams of a young black child and “ Instead of mass mur- ders vic- tims, they are single, solitary deaths, nearly three a day all the hopes and aspi- rations that his parents, relatives and friends had for him. He was 14. Steven was the young- est of four teenage vic- tims of gun violence in one month in the nation’s capital at the start of the year. The others were Paris DeShawn Brown, 19; Davon Fisher, 17; and Taiyania Aaliyah Thompson, 16. While America mourns the deaths of 17 teenagers killed in a Florida high school shooting and debate gun control in the wake of such incident, lost in the conversation is the fact that a similar number of children and teenagers are shot and killed every week. Instead of mass mur- ders victims, they are single, solitary deaths, nearly three a day. Ac- cording to statista.com, 1,278 people between the ages of 13 and 19 were killed in 2015, on aver- age more than 20 each week. They are children like Miracle McGowan, 15, killed January 12 in a drive-by shooting as she and three other people sat in a car in the Flor- ence-Firestone neighbor- hood in Los Angeles. They are Natalie Her- nandez in Dallas, 14-year- old fatally February 12 as she and three other W. W. Samuell High School students were sitting in a car in a city park. They are Ga’Quavious Wil- liams, 17, found dead in February outside of an Atlanta home with a gun- shot wound in the back. Mostly they are black and Hispanic, and their deaths rarely become a national rallying point around guns or gun control. Instead, family members and friends place their photos on T-shirts and place me- COURTESY PHOTO Gun Violence in America: Part 2 Taiyania Thompson kneels at the grave of her father, who was gunned down in an attempted robbery when he was 17. Thompson didn’t live as long as he did. Thompson, one of four teeangers killed in the nation’s capital in January, was shot and killed at 16. mentos around the plac- es they were killed. Four murders of teen- agers in one month was an oddity for D.C., but it was also a reminder of disparate toll that gun violence takes on black communities. This is a look at some of those lives. Steven Steven was described as a good student with lots of friends. “Everybody who came across him, they loved him,” his mother, Tif- fanie Jones, 35, told the Washington Post, “They could feel his energy.” At Friendship Colle- giate Academy, where Steven went to school, A career you can be proud of. Being a carpenter isn’t just a job. It’s a way of life. We’re devoted to strengthening the lives of our members with steady work, wealth and personal growth. We take a stand for our members and all workers. We work together to lead the building industry in safety, training and compensation. We create rich lives for our members and partners. To learn more about becoming a union carpenter, go to NWCarpenters.org. PORTLAND: 1636 East Burnside, Portland, OR 97214 | 503.261.1862 HEADQUARTERS: 25120 Pacific Hwy S, #200, Kent, WA 98032 | 253.954.8800 More than 20,000 members in the Pacific Northwest. 9th Grade academy di- rector, Lauren Johnson, recalls Steven as a “live- ly,” “giving,” and “sweet” student. He worked hard for his grades and was highly re- garded by many teachers and students, she said. Shortly after his death, the school held a cere- mony at the flagpole to honor his life. Led by the campus’ counselor-pas- tor, students read poems, lit candles, and released balloons. Students signed lami- nated posters with kind words and thoughts to give to his mother. Grief counseling also took place in each of the class- es that he attended. Many students cried, Johnson said. Steven’s locker re- mained decorated with photos, balloons, and signatures in March, as did his seat in his former English and math classes. On the 14th of February and March, the school gave prizes at lunch to commemorate Steven’s core values. “We have done so much to honor Steven,” Johnson said, “I wish we could do more.” Taiyania Taiyania Aaliyah Thompson, was the last teenager shot and killed in the nation’s capital in January. Thompson, 16, was fa- tally shot Jan. 25 while sitting on a living room sofa inside an apartment on Mount Olivet Road in Northeast Washington. Nearly a week after the shooting, police arrested Taiyania’s boyfriend of 8 months, Dekale Bowman. Bowman, 18, has been charged with second-de- gree murder while armed. An affidavit filed in D.C. Superior Court stated that he shot Taiya- nia “by accident.” As a child, Taiyania was given the nickname “Mama” by family for her caring nature, her moth- er and sisters said. In an interview, her family described her as “youth- ful,” while also having a maturity level unusual for her age. Her sister, Tiashaundra Thompson, 19, said the two had a special rela- tionship. Thompson recalled Tai- yania consoling Thomp- son’s daughter when she was a baby. Taiyania could stop her from crying with little effort, an ability that her older sister could not un- derstand. “She had my back and I had hers, and we had that understood,” Thompson said. Taiyania wanted to be- come a veterinarian, her mother, Lajoyina Thomp- son said. “She used to want to rescue all the animals that she saw outside,” Thompson, 41, said. While attending Sus- tainable Futures Public Charter School, Taiya- nia began to experiment with fashion and make- up and hoped to one day open her own clothing store, her family said. She was a private per- son, they said. She spent much of her time writing about life experiences; filling notebooks with raps, songs and poems. “Her uniqueness was remixing everything in her own way,” another sister, Tiandra Thomp- son, 21, said. Taiyania’s family said she was deeply affected by her father’s death, even though she was just 5 months old when he was fatally shot, al- legedly in a robbery in See SHOOTINGS on page 11