CLEVELAND — News 5 Investigators have uncovered an alarming trend — a growing number of kids and teens are killed in homicides, in Ohio and the Cleveland area. Young lives being taken in numbers not seen in years, and teens and their parents are living in fear. Some say local and state leaders need to do more to keep kids alive.
On a Tuesday night in the back of a library in Cleveland, the words of the young people recording a new song tell a story. Not one you’ll find on any shelf, but a story of pain, of loss, and of life, growing up in Cleveland.
Drive-bys, not one, not two /
They spinning the block, they spinning for you /
Hear the gunshots, don’t know what to do /
Another body dropped, must pray for the youth.
Kayla Peterson sings in the new single “Cleveland: Is It Safe?” produced and performed by a group of teens in an after-school program put on by the non-profit Refresh Collective.
Listen to the full song below:
“My family, we have a history of violence,” said Ericka Stewart, another student in the program. “All of my male elders are either dead or incarcerated.”
Sixteen-year-old Marc Johnson credits the arts program for keeping him away from the violence surrounding his life growing up in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood.
“My mother, she always told me that this life is never going to be safe for you. You’re always gonna have to look behind your back,” he said. “Like being able to express myself through music and through these lyrics is a blessing I will never be able to give back.”
The gritty lyrics may be shocking, but many say it’s their reality.
“Everything that’s happening right now, it’s like happening in my face, like violence not only in my neighborhood, in my city, but in my school,” Johnson said.
Peterson said she hears gunshots outside her house three or four times a week, and she lost a middle school classmate in a drive-by shooting.
It’s the kind of violence that News 5 Investigators found is happening more and more. The number of kids dying by homicide is growing at a troubling rate.
Between 2012 and 2022 the number of kids 17 or younger killed in Ohio rose 39%, according to Ohio Department of Health records.
In Cuyahoga County, it’s even worse. The number of kids killed rose 62% over the same period.
These statistics are a heartbreaking reality to Cleveland youth like Peterson.
“It’s just like why? Why do kids have to go through this? Why do mothers have to go through this? Burying their children?” she asks.
The violence is also heartbreaking to mothers like Sharena Zayed.
“I remember this day. He had to be like maybe 4 years old,” she said as she held a photograph of her son.
“Amir crossed paths with a murderer, Amir crossed paths with someone who had a gun,” she said.
Amir Bradley died in March 2020. The 15 year old was shot and killed in broad daylight as he and a friend walked down the sidewalk in Cleveland’s Central neighborhood.
“I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “It felt as if I had died and that I went to Hell because this was my worst nightmare.”
Investigators said her son was not the gunman’s target.
“I just never thought that I would be affected by gun violence in any way,” she said. “I didn’t own a gun. I didn’t hang around people that had guns at that point in my life.”
It’s why she believes everyone needs to wake up to what’s happening.
“Kids are dying. And I don’t want Cleveland to be known for that. I don’t want Cleveland to be known for the place where children can’t make it to the age of 16,” she said. “The price is too great to not pay attention to those numbers.”
And those numbers aren’t getting better in Cuyahoga County. Already this year, 30 kids and teens killed — the highest it’s been since at least 2007, according to state health figures.
“I think we’re beyond a blip. I think it’s a trend,” said Dan Flannery, Director of Case Western Reserve University’s Begun Center for Violence Prevention, which studies teen violence. “I think what’s different today is this feeling that gun violence is just part of what I have to deal with every day.”
We asked if this makes it more likely that young people in Cleveland will engage in some sort of violence.
“It makes it more likely that they’re going to go out and get a gun, and have one available to them, because they’re afraid, and because they see this going on all around them, and they want to be prepared,” he said. “And they’re using it when something does occur.
He believes city, state and local leaders aren’t paying enough attention to the numbers.
“What is more important than children dying?” Zayed said. “I can’t think of one, not a stadium or a development that is more important than our children. At this point, what future do we have to look forward to when all the children are dying?”
It’s something they also wonder about at Refresh Collective.
“It’s a scary fact that a kid that you will see in the hall one day may never come back,” Johnson said.
These teens hope this song and its lyrics serve as an alarm, a wake-up call, that if you want to keep kids safe, now is the time to figure out a safer future.
“This is the city I was born in, I was raised in. I’ve seen this city many different things,” Peterson said. “To be able to leave and come back and see that violence has decreased, and people are getting along more…it would be so amazing to see that, it really would.”
Open your eyes /
and realize /
Your light is bright /
Your change is nigh /
Don’t go softly into that good night /
You have a choice /
You have a voice /
Choose life.
