Jim Dey: More heartbreak as senseless shootings continue

Here’s the latest pop-up party casualty list:

Two spontaneous gatherings this past weekend featured alcohol and people with guns. There were six gunshot casualties, including four wounded and two dead.

It’s happened before, and all the interested parties knew the drill.

A host of Champaign city officials, law enforcement officers and assorted community members gathered afterward at the police department to decry the mindless violence and pledge to do their best to end it.

Champaign Police Chief Timothy Tyler urged community members to “not lose the faith” in official efforts to curtail, if not end, the violence. But he acknowledged the personal anguish he experienced viewing the deceased at the hospital and speaking to their family members.

“I never, ever, ever want to be at the hospital again,” he said.

What happened? Why did it happen? Who is responsible?

Police were tight-lipped about the events, declining even to estimate the number of people who attended the spontaneous party where the two fatalities occurred.

“We’re still very early in the investigation,” said Lt. Gregory Manzana, who oversees department detectives.

It might be more accurate to say “investigations,” because there were two shootings.

The first shooting occurred in the 1800 block of West Bradley Avenue, leaving two women with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds.

The second occurred after midnight Sunday in an apartment parking lot in the 2000 block of Cynthia Drive in northwest Champaign. A statement issued by police said a “subject or subjects produced firearms and opened fire.”

Authorities said two 18-year-olds were killed — George Dorris-Rodgers and Daniyjah Staple.

Two others — a 25-year-old female shot in the arm and a 15-year-old male shot in the leg — sustained non-fatal wounds.

The incidents represent two more in a string of shootings — some fatal, some not — that have plagued Champaign-Urbana for several years.

Manzana reported there have been 51 confirmed shootings in Champaign so far in 2024. He said that’s a “slight increase” over the same period in 2023, but substantially less than the 80 reported over the same time in 2022.

That’s why Mayor Deb Feinen described herself as “heartbroken” and “angry” over what transpired.

“My heart aches for the victims,” she said.

The bureaucrats cited the city’s community gun violence reduction programs that are intended to end the violence.

Nonetheless, the shootings continue.

Chief Tyler said pop-up parties — events where younger people spontaneously gather in open places like parking lots — are particularly volatile because people are consuming alcohol, armed and aggrieved.

“Don’t go!” Tyler advised, warning that those who do run a risk “to be shot.”

Much of the discussion focused on the issue of “gun violence,” a reference to the apparently easy availability of firearms.

But guns aren’t discharged spontaneously. People, often carrying them illegally, shoot and kill.

Why?

Samantha Carter, who leads the Champaign County Board, attributed the problem at least partially to “issues plaguing the Black community,” particularly young people over the state of their lives, which includes a lack of opportunity and inadequate education.

“I think our youths are full of anger,” said Carter, who indicated she knows the mothers of the two who were killed.

Carter was referring to what sociologists call the “root causes” of social dysfunction — family disintegration, poverty, drug addiction, mental illness and domestic chaos.

One speaker said the city’s aid programs are aimed at “root causes.”

But they are much easier to identify than to effectively address. Social engineers have worked for years — without great success — to ameliorate those kinds of issues. And they’ll continue to do so in future decades.

That’s why last weekend’s shootings, while certainly not the first, are far from the last, merely the latest.