By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
In response to the shooting death of 17-year-old Amarr Murphy-Paine outside of Garfield High School last Thursday, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, Seattle Public Schools, 100 Black Parents—a local nonprofit organization—and the Greater Seattle Community came together in a massive show of unity and support for the students, teachers, and staff at Garfield Tuesday morning as they greeted students as they returned to school for the first time since the incident took place.
Murphy-Paine, a prominent member of the Garfield High School student body and member of the football team, died from multiple gunshot wounds after breaking up a fight. According to Seattle Police investigators, after attempting to intervene in the fight, Murphy-Paine walked away, when he was approached and shot multiple times by the suspect, who is described as a Black high school-aged male. The shooter fled the scene and, as of press time, had not been apprehended by the police.
The event, entitled “We Are Here, We Care,” drew hundreds of people who care and are concerned about the safety and well-being of the young people in our community.
“Today is a moment for us to show up as a community with a specific purpose to heal,” said Dr. Brent Jones, Superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools, when addressing the crowd to start the event. “Chukundi Salisbury, director of one of the organizers [of this event], 100 Black Parents, said, ‘we are here.’ We want to make sure our students know that it is our intent, our objective, and our mission to create healthy environments for our students, a safe passage, so that they can thrive.”
According to Chukundi Salisbury, Founder and Director of 100 Black Parents, being physically present for the students was the overarching message of the day. Salisbury says that it is important for the students to know that the community is here to support them, not just for today, but throughout their journey through school and life.
“We want to let the students, faculty, and staff know that we are here physically,” says Salisbury. “Just like they have to be here and so that is the simple message. We do not necessarily have an agenda today, other than letting students know that we do care about what happens in their lives.”
King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay, who was also in attendance at the event, says that the event is an important step in making sure that students are able to refocus their attention from fear back to love.
“I think this is a beautiful event,” says Zahilay. “I so happy that the organizers did this to bring our students back to love instead of fear. This is all about relationships, it is all about support, it’s all about showing students that they have nothing to be afraid of and that we are on their side. So, I am happy about this.”
The event on Tuesday was just one in a number of events that took place to show support of the friends, family, and classmates of Murphy-Paine in the wake of this tragedy, including a candlelight vigil that was held at the Garfield High School football field Friday might.
Immediately following the incident last Thursday, community members and leaders, including Mayor Harrell, Interim Police Chief Rahr, and City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth, held a press conference at Mt. Calvary Christian Center to address the incident and discuss meaningful ways for the community to unite against gun violence.
According to Harrell, the only real solution to curbing the violence that we are seeing these days is to get the enormous number of guns off the streets and have law enforcement and the community unite to fight for their communities.
“This is a very difficult day,” says Harrell. “The bottom line is we have too many guns on our streets. The bottom line is it is too easy to access a gun. This message may seem repetitive, but it is the absolute truth in our country, our states, and indeed in our city.”
“There is a sense of commonality that we see in these kinds of incidents, and until we address the barrage of guns in our city, we will never be able to make sustainable progress,” Harrell continued.
Community members expressed concern for the families of both the victim and the perpetrator. To prevent this from happening in the future, both community and government leaders agree that unity is essential in tackling this epidemic.
“As a person who is in the business of touching lives and making people better, my heart is absolutely crushed,” says Bishop Reggie Witherspoon, Sr., pastor of Mt. Calvary Christian Center. “This is a tragedy of epidemic proportions. Friends, we have an epidemic on our hands. We are on the verge of losing an entire generation of young people.”
“This is not a racial issue, this is a human issue,” Witherspoon continued. “The question that begs to be answered is what is a young teenager doing with a gun to begin with? We need to be able to answer those questions.”
In the last few months there have been a number of shootings throughout the area and across the country. According to advocates, the number of gun-related incidents in America are jarring. Every day more than 110 Americans are killed by gun violence, more than 200 are shot or wounded on average, and nearly 16,000-gun homicides occur in America every year.
The irony in this particular incident is that it took place just one day before National Gun Violence Awareness Day, where many local organizations, the city of Seattle, and King County had planned a series of events commemorating the day of recognition and joined in efforts to reduce gun violence and the number of guns on the street.
On Friday, Community Passageways, a local nonprofit organization that seeks to prevent community violence, held a gun lockbox giveaway event in the Central Area of Seattle, just a few blocks away from where the shooting incident at Garfield High School took place. According to Katoya Palmer, Chief Operating Officer for Community Passageways, the goal of the event was to make sure that gun owners keep their guns in a safe place away from children in order to avoid tragedies like the one experienced at Garfield.
“Our events are extremely important as we get the lockboxes into our communities to keep the people safe. The point of it is to ensure that there is safety and keeping guns out of the hands of children,” says Palmer. “When the family of the Garfield victim showed up to advocate for the safety of the community, after the terrible event at the high school, that was just a powerful moment of healing.”
In addition, the city of Seattle held a National Gun Violence Awareness Day ceremony at the Martin Luther King Memorial Park, during which the mayor of Seattle Bruce Harrell addressed the shooting and its effects on the community.
“We are here to talk about national gun violence awareness day, but what can we say when we are losing a generation to gun violence?” said Harrell. “We know the data is very clear that Black, indigenous, mixed race, and Latino young people in King County are disproportionately being exposed to gun violence. How can our hearts not become heavy when we see what just happened at Garfield.”
“This is why we are here. I can brag about the investments we are making and community-based solutions, technology and more good officers that will protect our community and not over police our communities and I can talk about our fight against racism and violence. I can talk about all of that but at the end of the day we are a resilient community. We have to be and we have to be motivated by love, that is the only answer,” concluded Harrell.
According to police officials, they are still in the process of investigating the Murph-Paine case, and are encouraging anyone with information to call the SPD Violent Crime Tip Line at (206) 233-5000, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.
