Our Kids in Long Beach are Being Murdered

by Brenda Knepper

On a Halloween evening a little over a year ago, a close friend of my son’s was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting. Up until Richard’s death, I had been oblivious to how many of our young people in Long Beach were being murdered.

Did you know that the candlelight vigils honoring those who have been killed, are rituals that kids seem to know to perform, without deliberation, in order to begin to heal? I didn’t, until I went looking for my son a few nights after Richard’s death and found him and his friends sitting around a makeshift altar on the sidewalk in front of Richard’s house. They were clearly in shock, trying to process what had happened. Money that would usually have been spent on something else had been used to purchase altar candles at the 99-cent store. Was this not a plea for help? Instead of being angry with my son for not letting me know where he was, I felt compelled to drive to the 99-cent store and buy candles to join the group. Although I’m not Jewish, the term “sit shiva” came to mind, as we sat there by the sidewalk memorial honoring this young man whose life was too brief. These boys seemed to innately know what they needed to do to mark the tragic passing of their friend.

Did you know that the weekend car washes put on by teenagers around Long Beach are frequently held to raise money for funerals for friends or relatives who have been killed? I didn't know that -- until kids who knew Richard and members of his family quickly put together two car washes over the weekend following his death to raise money for his funeral and provide funds for his girlfriend who was pregnant at the time. One was held at the AutoZone parking lot on Atlantic in North Long Beach near my home. These Hispanic kids knew what needed to be done as soon as they heard the news, because they had probably been through it before. I hadn’t.

A couple weeks following Richard’s death, a car wash was held in that same AutoZone parking lot for a 24-year-old who had been found in his car in Compton, riddled with bullets. According to one of the girls that I spoke with who was helping at the car wash, the young man had fallen asleep in his car in front of a friend’s house, waiting for the friend to come home, and had been killed as he lay there sleeping. Okay, so he wasn’t killed in Long Beach, but his car wash took place in Long Beach. Close enough.Several times since then I've passed car washes as I drive through town and I've wanted to cry because, inevitably I find that it's for a young person who is no longer with us. I had never noticed. For some reason, I thought that most car washes were put on by church groups to raise money for youth retreats. As I passed corner lots with kids busily washing cars and soliciting donations, I had never looked closely at the posters tacked to nearby telephone poles, with their photos of slain young men.

Do you think that reporters from the local newspaper always know when someone from your community has been killed and will automatically report the story? Such as when an 18-year-old from Jordan High has been killed in Wilmington by someone wearing a wolf mask on Halloween night . . . wouldn’t you think that a young man being shot in front of his younger sister who was in the back seat, and his cousin who was driving, would be a newsworthy event? I thought so. I thought that the reporters closely monitored police scanners or logs, but after weeks of there being no mention of Richard’s death in the Long Beach Press-Telegram, I finally wrote a letter to the editor, because I wanted my son and his friends to know that the adults in the city cared that their friend had died. The young people knew that they themselves cared, because they were texting each other and paying homage to Richard on their MySpace pages (R.I.P. RICHIE! Ill nVr fGet U!). Without a peep from the adult community around them.What’s a boy to do? Seek revenge? I’m sure it happens -- when it seems like no one cares, or that nothing can be done.

As it turns out, no one had called the paper about Richard -- it's not that the editor didn't want to write the story; they were just unaware of the story. I think there's a lot of apathy in communities where drive-byes and murdered kids are a common occurrence. And unfortunately, three white girls in the Bixby Knolls neighborhood were beat up by black youths from North Long Beach that same Halloween night and you can be sure someone called the paper about that. That made headlines, even national news, for months afterwards.To their credit, the Press-Telegram did finally write about Richard several weeks after his death and they wrote a follow-up front page story when, unbelievably, Richie's girlfriend gave birth to the first baby of the New Year in Long Beach that following January 1st.

Do you think that the reason some of our teenage drivers recline their front car seats so far back is to keep their heads out of the range of a bullet? I didn’t think that -- until the bullet went through Richard’s head, causing his mother to have to make the awful decision to take him off life support two days after the shooting. He was made a vegetable upon impact, with no chance of recovery. After that, I not only worried about how vulnerable my son’s head was while he was out driving in his car, I also worried about my own head.

Have you ever thought about how the term "drive-by" waters down and minimizes what it really is? Murder or attempted murder. I mentioned this to someone recently and they said, 'yeah -- like someone was just out for a nice Sunday drive and whoops! shot your kid. They were just driving by.' My son visited Richard in the hospital before he was taken off life support, and you can imagine that Richie was not looking or feeling too good. In fact he was in a coma, with his face swollen and bandages wrapped around his head. What happened to Richard was not merely a drive-by; it was a violent, bloody act that not only ended his life, but ripped through and devastated the lives of his friends, his family -- many people, for many years to come.

His son will grow up without a father. And although he was young, Richard was really looking forward to being a Dad. And I'm really angry that, for my son, losing his friend in this manner was undeniably a defining experience in his young life. Something I would never have wished on him.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘She’s not talking about my neighborhood or my kids.’ But you're wrong. Long Beach is our neighborhood. Our kids in Long Beach are being murdered. They are being brought up in a war zone. And we just aren’t angry enough yet to stop it. But I’m getting there.