SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In a few devastating hours on Saturday, multiple shootings cut young lives short, including nine-year-old Makaylah Brent.
"Our babies don't deserve to keep getting slaughtered like this. It isn't fair," said Amber Leslie Brent, her grandmother.
As the community gathered around her family during a Sunday night vigil, the heartbreak and pain rippled even further.
Makaylah was shot and killed while at Mama Marks Park with her family. It was one of four shootings within six hours on Saturday. The second was inside an Afghan market in the Arden-Arcade area. A 17-year-old was found dead with gunshot wounds in a car wreck on Jackson road. A fourth shooting happened in North Sacramento on Mabel street.
The tragic weekend tops off a year of deadly shootings already outpacing 2015's spike of 43 homicides in the city of Sacramento.
Leaders say the pandemic has contributed to the rise in violence.
"When a young person is killed by gun violence in a neighborhood, the soul is sucked out of the neighborhood, and we've got to show up on scene and really build community again- that's in crisis," said Kindra Montgomery-Block, with the Black Child Legacy Campaign.
The coalition said its street-level intervention and resource work, including Advance Peace and Brother to Brother, helped drive down youth homicides to zero for the past two years in Sacramento, but the pandemic has exacerbated underlying issues in vulnerable communities facing poverty and inter-generational trauma.
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"It takes a community to save a community," Montgomery-Block said.
She said the coalition has expanded its teams, which have been working full force offering wrap-around resources for families and intervening in feuds. They've been gaining support from the city, which also allocated $2 million in funding to the group earlier this year, but she says more can always be done.
City Councilmember Allen Warren who grew up in North Sacramento said these grassroots efforts tackle a toxic mindset that some young people have in settling differences.
"It's absolutely cowardly to just to drive by indiscriminately," he said. "It's no way for long term sustainability. You will not resolve issues by going around shooting people.
As a city leader, he said it's vital to inject more funding for youth resources in his district.
"We have to protect, I think, our precious young people in our community," Warren said.
At least five people, ages 18 years and younger, have been killed this year in shootings or stabbings. That number is already outpacing youth homicides in 2017. The anti violence groups on the ground say their work is more important than ever.