This group may be responsible for a sudden decrease in Charlottesville shootings — and they need help

A burst of gunfire woke Claude Booker Jr. from a deep sleep one night last November.

The 13-year-old felt a rush of terror. His thoughts turned immediately to his little cousin, asleep upstairs in his aunt’s South First Street home. The shots continued as Claude leapt to his feet, forgetting his glasses, and tore up the steps.

In his cousin’s room, Claude saw his aunt lying prone on top of her little boy. She was using her body to shield him against stray bullets. He was safe.

Claude turned and ran frantically to his older cousin’s room. There, the two huddled together against a back wall while the gunfire continued just outside. His aunt had told them it was the safest place in the house to wait out a shooting.

Claude didn’t know it at the time, but all those bullets were aimed at a man he knew — Dre’Shawn Rayvon McDonald.

McDonald was killed that night outside Claude’s aunt’s house. He was the first of five people who would be shot in Charlottesville in the remainder of 2020, four of whom died.

“This is not just going on where my aunt lives,” Claude said, reading aloud from a story he wrote for a school assignment. “The people that are living there are mad and scared. There are kids there, and what are they going to do when somebody’s kid is dead? Then somebody is going to be mad and sad. Like, my little [cousin] is 10, and he’s scared to come home because he did not know if he would die tomorrow.”

Claude’s family is one of many in Charlottesville’s predominantly Black communities that have lived through the recent spree of what police are calling “ambush style” shootings. That’s when one or more shooters fire dozens of rounds in a single attack. During the fall and early winter, the number of those — and all — shootings locally skyrocketed.

Confirmed instances of shots being fired within the city nearly doubled in 2020 over previous years — and most of that was since June. The increase reached its peak between about November and January, alarming community members and local leaders alike.

Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney even appeared before news cameras in early January to outline the severity of the problem and call on community members to help stop it.

But then, that trend quietly began to reverse.

The Charlottesville Police Department said it cannot provide complete data on the number of shootings in the city. The department logs some shootings as “shots fired” and others as “aggravated assaults.” Not all aggravated assaults involve shootings, however, and a department spokesman said he could not say how many of the aggravated assault calls involved a gun.

Read the original feature on Cville Tomorrow here: https://www.cvilletomorrow.org/this-group-may-be-responsible-for-a-sudden-decrease-in-charlottesville-shootings-and-they-need-help/