‘Empty of it’: After mother and child killed, Hartford advocates call for end to violence

After the one on Tuesday shooting in Hartford that took the lives of a young mother and her son, violence prevention advocates — who are all too familiar with gun violence — say it’s time for a change.

Janice Hill and other members of Mothers United Against Violence gathered near the scene of the shooting that killed 20-year-old Jessiah Mercado and 4-month-old Messiah Diaz.

Hill lost her son, Alford Grayson, in a shooting in 2015. The news this week brought back painful memories.

“It’s hard when you have to endure the death of a child. It’s tough. It’s not easy,” Hill said. “I don’t care how long or how many years it happened – the pain comes back, because you relive it. When you hear that someone else’s child was killed and a child was killed, it brings back the pain again.”

Henrietta Beckman runs Mothers United Against Violence. She too lost a son to gun violence. Randy died in 2002.

“These two young men didn’t deserve this,” Beckman said. “That kid had his whole life to live. His mother had her whole life to live.”

“I mean, a 20-year-old and a 4-month-old? Come on, everyone, Beckman said.

Reverend Henry Brown, a survivor of the shooting himself, called on Hartford residents to come together to stop gun violence.

“The siege is on this community,” Brown said. “We have to do better for each other. We have to really put our ankles in the ground and say, “No more of this stuff right here. It has to stop. Because the only way we’re going to stop this stuff — and I hope people are listening — is through people in the community.”

Hill said the shooting deaths of the mother and son — Hartford’s 18th and 19th homicides of the year — should be a wake-up call for residents to get involved in preventing violence.

“Stop sitting in your house and saying, ‘Oh, that’s not my kid,'” Hill said. “One day it can be your child. You have to come together, work together. We are a community.”

Beckman says the community is best positioned to help stop the crimes.

“Many of us know when someone is going to commit a crime,” Beckman said. “If we see something or hear something, say something.”

Responding to so many shootings takes its toll, Brown said. As he walked away from reporters on Wednesday, he expressed his frustration.

“I have to deal with it all the time,” Brown said. “I’m sick of this.”