The Year of the Gun

A 17-year-old Goldsboro High School student was gunned down Dec. 29, but all anyone seems to be talking about on social media is the “Cougar Pride” being felt by alumni, parents, and staff because the school’s girls’ and boys’ varsity basketball teams won a tournament the same day.

They aren’t posting about the tragic loss of another young life, a teenager gunned down in a hail of bullets — more than 20 shots were fired in the fatal incident — along the 900 block of Hugh Street.

On social media? Radio silence.

Don’t get us wrong.

The tournament titles are a big deal for sure, a reason to be proud.

But where was the outpouring of grief for those players’ classmate?

What is really the more important thing that happened Dec. 29?

There were no calls for action, or conversation about what is making so many more young people choose violence — or how gangs and drugs are fueling crime in this community.

There are no mentors, counselors, and activists mobilizing to send a message that street life is a dangerous choice — and that this community is serious about finding those who take part in it and holding them accountable.

There are no community leaders pushing to start the conversation about the dozens and dozens of gang-affiliated students who are in the county schools and what to do about reaching them.

There is no discussion about the fact that the person who took that teenager’s life might very well be walking the halls inside Goldsboro High School, Eastern Wayne, or Southern Wayne right now.

And there is no talk about how much worse the violence, the fighting, the attitudes, and the problems are with dangerous behavior at far too many of our county schools.

Nothing.

There are reasons why.

Maybe people are tired of all the negative and, for a change, needed something to celebrate.

Maybe some of them did not even realize that a 17-year-old died that night.

Or, maybe, sadly, they have already moved on — just another death, another shooting, more senseless violence in the inner-city.

But it is time to talk.

We can’t afford to be numb or oblivious to the violence that is plaguing Goldsboro.

And, yes, it is an epidemic.

Because of all the stories that captivated this community last year — from the indictment of one current and one former high-ranking Wayne County Sheriff’s Office deputy to Congress and President Joe Biden giving the Air Force the green light to cut 31 percent of its F-15E fleet — it turns out that 2023 was the “Year of the Gun.”

Let’s look at the facts — and the recent history.

Goldsboro Police Chief Mike West says the incident that claimed that teenager’s life a little more than a week ago was one of 949 shootings inside the city limits in 2023 — nearly double the 595 reported by ShotSpotter the previous year.

But that number, as horrifying as it is, is not the one that should rattle every single person living in this community.

There were 5,179 rounds fired during those “events” — 2,500 more bullets than in 2022.

Please read that again.

More than 5,100 bullets flew in our city last year.

And most of them were fired by young people, West says.

We told you last year that the statistics were getting scary.

We talked about the drive-by on Beech Street, in an affluent neighborhood that is home to judges and the district attorney.

We told you about a similar incident that played out in 2021 on East Mulberry Street in front of houses worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that often see young children running around in front yards and riding bicycles down the sidewalk.

We reported on the store clerk gunned down inside a Wayne Memorial Drive Family Dollar in broad daylight back in May.

We allowed community leaders — from former Mayor Pro Tem Taj Polack to youth advocate Delavisha Harris-Faison — to unwrap just how we have lost this generation to the streets after 15-year-old Joyonna Pearsall was gunned down at a Spring Break pool party in broad daylight.

And we painted a picture of how the aftermath of a deadly shooting typically plays out in Goldsboro.

Balloons are released.

Memorial T-shirts are printed.

Social media tributes are posted.

A rally is held — one at which community leaders, politicians, and representatives from various organizations declare “we’ve had enough” and this city “won’t stand for this anymore.”

And then, as if it never happened, they move on.

“Too many people are looking at this young girl who just died like they’re shocked. Why are you shocked? In my city, it’s gotten worse, drastically I’d say, in the last two years,” Polack said then. “Joyonna, she wasn’t the first. And she wasn’t the last. But this gained momentum and news coverage because, let’s call it what it was, it was a mass shooting. But even still, where are those people now? Where are the ones who were at the rallies and the marches? If they’re out there, they’re awfully quiet.”

Having attended the memorial for Joyonna — and the Terry Walls Holiday Invitational championship games hosted by GHS Dec. 29 — we can tell you where many of them are.

And we can assure you they aren’t quiet.

They are filling the Norvell T. Lee Gymnasium on Cougar game days — yelling and cheering for a handful of students who can put a ball through a net while those teenagers’ peers fall deeper and deeper into a street life that all-too-often leads them to prison or an early grave.

They are in the stands at Eastern Wayne and Southern Wayne when the Warriors and Saints take to the court.

We see them with our own eyes — the non-profit leaders, stop-the-violence activists, board members, alumni, teachers, and administrators.

We watch them, sitting shoulder to shoulder with known gang members and gang associates, laughing and interacting with them as if these young people are just normal, run-of-the-mill teens.

And then, we receive the press releases from the GPD that identify some of those very youths as gun violence perpetrators or victims.

Frankly, it’s nauseating.

Harris-Faison and Polack, both GHS alums, talked about how a premium is no longer being put on “education and accountability” — how violent students are rarely properly disciplined at school, so their behavior is normalized and then amplified back in the neighborhoods that have seen by far the most staggering escalation in Goldsboro’s gun violence numbers in recent months.

“At the end of the day, it comes down to responsible adults. That’s from parents, that’s from the community, that’s from teachers and principals. Everyone has to try to come to the same page if we’re going to make a difference,” Harris-Faison said. “But when they get on these buses, when they get to these schools, if no one is holding these kids accountable for what’s going on, they think it’s OK to do. They think it’s OK to fight. Because what’s going to happen? I’m just gonna get a slap on the wrist.”

And from there it escalates — more violence in schools, in neighborhoods, on the streets.

Gangs aren’t just on the street corners anymore, Harris-Faison said.

They are in schools.

That’s why leadership from adults matters — why school personnel and community leaders have to stand up, set a boundary and a consequence and mean it.

But they don’t.

And they don’t show up either.

“We have so many that come in when something happens, but those same ones who say, ‘We’re here. We’re gonna help these kids,’ they leave,” Harris-Faison said. “I love these kids. I have dedicated my life to them — to be a positive role model and helping them in any way that I can — but a lot of times, we have these people come in when something happens, but when we need them the most, when these kids need them the most, we can’t find anybody. The leaders? Where are they?”

If you want to find them, it’s not hard.

Just look for the GHS, Southern Wayne, and Eastern Wayne basketball schedules online and buy a ticket.

But do us — and your community — a favor when you get there.

Ask those people, from school administrators and Board of Education members to so-called stop-the-violence “activists,” just what they are doing to stop the escalation in gun violence that could cost Wayne County everything from private investments to the Air Force base that has been propping up our local economy for decades.

Ask them why some students with documented drug use and violent offenses at school and shocking attendance records are eligible to play (more on that later) — and what kind of message that sends about what we, as a community, consider acceptable behavior.

Ask them if they even know the name of the 17-year-old whose body was riddled with bullets Dec. 29 on Hugh Street.

And most importantly, ask them why it seems the only measure of the “great things” happening on inner-city campuses is the win/loss column when some student-athletes are posting pictures of themselves smoking blunts and flashing illegal firearms and gang signs on social media.

It’s time to start being honest.

It’s time to ignore the tendency to gloss over the real story.

And the real story here is a deadly numbers game with home courts that any one of us could easily identify on a map but don’t because we’re afraid.

Some of us think that the violence will never touch us.

But we know the numbers — 949 shooting incidents and 5,179 rounds in a single year.

Now, you do, too.

The bullets, you see, don’t have names.

Who in this community is a stray one going to have to find before we wake up and back up those cries of “we’ve had enough” and this city “won’t stand for this anymore” with some action?