Cedar Rapids community leaders call on parents for help after deadly weekend

CEDAR RAPIDS - With two 15 year olds dead in six months and a 16-year-old facing a murder charge, Rita Robinson posed a question about gun violence in the community that's on a lot of people's minds.

'Where are the parents?” the Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association member asked. 'We've got to figure out why parents are not taking accountability at 11 o'clock at night, 1 in the morning and not caring where their children are.”

Robinson, who also serves on the local chapter of the NAACP, was one of a group of community members who called for action during a news conference Monday afternoon at City Hall.

The conference comes after Senquez Jackson, 15, was pronounced dead Saturday after a Friday night shooting; after Brandon Johnson, 21, was killed during a brawl Saturday night in the middle of Maplewood Drive that also left a 16-year-old injured with a gunshot; and after Aaron Richardson, 15, was shot and killed in September.

No one has been charged in the death of Senquez, which police say may have been accidental.

Kenyauta Vesey-Keith, 16, has been charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder in Saturday's shooting on Maplewood Drive.

And Robert Humbles, 14, has pleaded in Aaron's shooting death.

'This has been going on for some time, to the point that so many of us across Cedar Rapids and beyond, I think, we've really gotten to the point of we're sick of it,” said Carletta Knox-Seymour, a Cedar Rapids business owner. 'We're sick of it. We're tired of this.”

More than a dozen community leaders, school officials, clergy members, city representative and other concerned citizens spoke during a roughly 70-minute news conference. Speakers offered a variety of solutions, including finding summer jobs for youths.

'If our kids work, they're not out there being knuckleheads,” said Shelby Humbles, a deacon at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church.

The Rev. Kimberly Abram-Bryant of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Iowa City said today's youngsters inundated with messages of violence. She said it's important to look at gun violence as an issue not related to just one neighborhood or one race.

'This is a citywide issue,” she said. 'We have to label this as a citywide issue.”

Police Chief Wayne Jerman noted the importance of getting guns off the streets and changing the thinking about firearms. He said more than 100 guns are seized in the city each year.

'We need the help of responsible adults that can help put out the message to their children that they shouldn't be acquiring guns,” he said. 'The thought process, the decision to obtain a gun needs to be changed. We need to provide role models and help our youths make better decisions.”

Jerman said both weekend shooting deaths remain under investigation.

Senquez, a ninth-grader at Washington High School, died Saturday evening less than 24 hours after police responded to 1424 Bever Ave. SE for a report of shooting. Jerman said the teen's death does not appear to be an 'intentional assault.”

During Monday's news conference, a speaker suggested he might have been killed when someone pulled the trigger on a gun that had an empty clip but one round in the chamber.

Jerman said police have spoken with the shooter, but would not comment on the circumstances. He said police are trying to interview two others who were present.

'We're looking at the possibility of it being an accident,” Jerman said.

Alphonse O'Bannon said he got to know Senquez when he coached his older brother's basketball team. O'Bannon described him as 'fun (and) always respectful.”

'He was always a kid that fit in,” O'Bannon said.

Johnson, killed late Saturday, marked the latest episode in what police said is a two-year-long feud between two families that started in 2014 with a brawl in the Lindale Mall food court.

Police said a fight broke out Saturday night in the 1100 block of Maplewood Drive involving a dozen or more combatants, some of them parents of the fighters.

During that melee, Vesey-Keith got a gun from a car and shot Johnson and the 16-year-old, police said.

'At this point, we have not been able to determine how he knew the gun was in the car or how he came to be in possession of the gun,” Jerman said Monday.

City Council member Justin Shields noted this is not the first time community members have met after a fatal shooting, comparing it with a news conference after Aaron's killing. Shields said more needs to be done.

'Parents need to be parents. Neighbors need to be neighbors. We all need to work at this,” he said. Or 'we'll be gathering here before the summer is over, burying someone else's child.”