SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — Sacramento County withstood a violent week with four separate homicides in four days. The most recent homicide happened Saturday night involving juveniles.
Now, community members are speaking up about the spike in violence and what changes need to happen.
"I'm frustrated," said Berry Accius, a community advocate in Sacramento.
Accius is frustrated by the amount of death in Sacramento County since last Wednesday.
It started on Wednesday morning when the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office arrested a mom and her son in connection to the killing of their roommate.
"The mother was actually going to be booked in for a murder. The son is being booked in as an accessory after the fact," Sgt. Amar Gandhi, spokesperson for the sheriff's office, told ABC10..
The same night, deputies found a man shot in the neck in the south Sacramento County area. Andrew Jones was charged with murder in that case.
The next day, the sheriff's office said a homeless man was shot and killed, also in south Sacramento, and, just Saturday night, a 17-year-old shot and killed in what the sheriff's office said was a gang-related attack in broad daylight.
"This is a gang homicide. Let's not shy away from it. Let's not call it anything else. This is completely gang-motivated, all gang driven," Sgt. Gandhi told ABC10.
However, Accius said labeling it gang activity doesn't help solve the problem. He said there are more opportunities for troubled youth and people to do bad than good.
"How are individuals getting so much access to guns before opportunities, is a glaring reflection of our society right now," said Accius.
That's why his organization Voice of the Youth works with young people in hopes of steering them into the right direction to try to prevent the string of violence seen the past couple of days.
"My high focus is, of course, to young people, because I don't want them to be turned into the adults that now commit the crimes," he said. "We can't continue to sit back and just be OK with this and normalize this kind of gun violence in our community."
Voice of the Youth will be hosting a rally against gun violence at the Capitol on June 30 at 12:00 p.m. The sheriff's office's gang unit will be continuing to investigate and increase enforcement.
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