NBC 7’s Shellye Leggett spoke with a youth outreach group about the violence.
The Chula Vista community is recovering after a shooting on West Manor and another one about a week ago, both involving people under the age of 18. Community members said these types of violent crimes are becoming more and more common.
Chula Vista youth have been on both sides of gun violence over the last few weeks.
“Just the age alone, it should be alarming for any of us,” said Sgt. Anthony Molina with the Chula Vista Police Department.
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Most recently, CVPD said a 14-year-old boy was shot multiple times after leaving a house party near West Manor Dr.
“Luckily, at the time he was conscious and breathing and they were able to perform life-saving measures,” Molina said.
And just last week, CVPD said a 15-year-old was arrested in connection with a shooting outside of Novo Brazil Brewing in the Otay Ranch Town Center.
“We started hearing the gunshots. She says ‘We have to run, Yasmin, they’re shooting,’” said Yasmin Martinez who was inside the brewery when the shooting started.
Several people were hurt, including a 16-year-old boy.
“It’s sad that he made that decision, right? He’s going to forever have his life affected and everybody else that was affected as well,” Martinez said.
CVPD said these types of youth crimes are not common for the department and without community outreach from their nine school resource officers, there’d be many more incidents, but not everyone agrees.
“We tried to warn them about a year and a half ago when we saw some violence take place out there,” said Bishop Cornelius Bowser with Shaphat Outreach.
Bowser said our youth are suffering at the hands of other youth.
“When you talk about gun violence, today’s youth will not fight you, they will shoot you and if they do fight you, after, if they can get access to a gun, they will shoot you,” Bowser said.
He said the problem has gotten worse since the pandemic.
“There’s so many guns out on our streets, guns are coming in from other states that have laxed laws in their states and a lot of guns are being stolen in residences, in car theft and they’re getting them from friends and family members,” Bowser said.
He said to stop the violence, you have to attack the problem from inside.
“We deal with gun violence from a community perspective, but we believe and I believe that to reduce gun violence, the police need the community and the community needs the police. We have to work together,” Bowser said.
The suspects in the West Manor Dr. shooting have not been arrested or identified. CVPD said it’s still interviewing witnesses to learn more information.
