“Parents are gonna have to be parents again,” said Henry Brown, president of the Mesquite NAACP chapter.
MESQUITE, Texas — They parked a borrowed hearse at the entrance of an emergency town hall and rolled out a casket to go with it.
After three teenagers died within four days in Mesquite in two unrelated incidents involving gun violence, organizers were trying to scare people straight. And the message wasn’t aimed only at kids.
“Parents are gonna have to be parents again,” said Henry Brown, president of the Mesquite chapter of the NAACP.
Brown brought together Mesquite’s mayor, superintendent of schools and its police chief, along with pastors and leaders of local non-profits for “Collaboration for a Cure to Teen Violence,” an emergency town hall.
“Parents really broke my heart. They just allow children to do what they want to do without any repercussions. That isn’t the way I was raised, and I’m sure most of these folks weren’t raised that way either,” Brown said.
Calvary Temple Community Church hosted the event almost two weeks after the first deadly shooting.
On July 24, police say a 15-year-old boy shot two other teens inside a home on Pecan Creek Drive. Brandon McGhee, who was 16, died from his injuries.
In an unrelated incident on July 28 inside a home on Rusk Drive, police say an adult heard gunshots in a bedroom. A 16-year-old who lived at the home died. A 15-year-old later died at a hospital.
Police say the guns used in both incidents were stolen.
Mesquite Police Chief David Gill said during the town hall that a large number of guns are being stolen from unlocked vehicles. He demonstrated how to operate a gun lock and had 100 free locks to give away. The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office offered 50 more.
“We are seeing guns in the hands of kids constantly in the police department, and we need that to stop,” Gill said.
The teens who died were not current students of the district, according to Superintendent Angel Rivera, but at least one had previously attended Mesquite schools.
A new semester begins in one week, and Rivera admitted he’s always worried violence will spill into his schools.
“We allowed this to happen in our community. And ‘we’ is plural. I’m a member of this community as well. We have allowed this to happen,” Rivera said.
Speakers at the town hall pleaded with parents to start getting nosey about where kids are, who they’re with, and what’s in their backpacks. But they also implore them to teach kids about the potentially deadly consequences of a single shot.
“If you’re going to be a gun owner, please be responsible. Please keep it locked up,” Gill said. “We need guns out of their hands.”
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