Michigan woman condemns gun violence after losing loved ones

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — It has been eight days since four people were killed after authorities said a 14-year-old suspect opened fire at a high school in Winder, Georgia.

LaTasha McMillan, a Michigan native now living in Georgia, is one of hundreds of neighbors still grieving this tragedy. Her niece Jeina, was inside the high school when the shots were fired.

“It was a chaotic day; it was very very scary. Right now … I think I am still in a state of shock,” McMillan told News 8. “My niece did lose her math teacher, and she is pretty devastated right now. The first thing I did was I just hugged my niece, I just hugged her for as long as I could and just told her that I was so sorry that she had to experience this.”

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation identified the students killed in the shooting at Apalachee High School as Mason Schermerhorn, 14, and Christian Angulo, 14. The two teachers were identified as Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie.

The deadly shooting is a reminder that McMillan is no stranger to gun violence. He said it has been “nonstop” for her and her family for years.

McMillan lost her brother to gun violence when she was 15 years old and living in Grand Rapids. Ever since, throughout living in different states, tragedy continues to cast a long shadow. That violence even connects back to her Michigan roots.

Back in July, 63-year-old Michael Farmer was found dead in Muskegon after being reported missing. Farmer was McMillan’s uncle.

According to a release from the Muskegon Police Department, 63-year-old Michael Farmer was reported missing on July 1 from a Muskegon Heights neighborhood. A week later, police say Farmer’s body was found in his vehicle, located on Fleming Avenue near Winters Street in Muskegon.

And it doesn’t end there.

Just two days before the Georgia school shooting, McMillan’s childhood friend Carlos Piggee was shot and killed after a dispute at a party in Muskegon.

Muskegon police say they are working with federal investigators to try to arrest the person suspected of shooting and killing Piggee.

“People like me, we are tired. I am tired of getting that phone call,” she said. “I am at the point where sometimes, especially if it’s late at night, I am shell-shocked if I get a call late at night, I’m terrified. And usually, it’s a good call but because I have been through those things, that’s the trauma that I have inside of me, it scares me.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

As the Georgia shooting still looms over the community, McMillan rallied her strength for her neighborhood. She said she hosted a vigil for her community just four days after the shooting, hoping it would serve as a beacon of hope for the future.

“We need to be stronger. These are just great people who were taken from us way too soon,” she said. “We need more lawyers, more doctors, we need more entertainers people that we can laugh at and not people that we look at on the news as killers and people on the news for something violent.”

Even though this violence was not how McMillan chose to live her life, she said she knows that her mission is about what comes after.

“It’s unfortunate that I have to be in these situations, but I do feel like God ordained you to do certain things and I don’t know if that’s why I am the one who deals with so much death. But like I said, I am always the pillar of strength for other people, and I am going to continue to be that person.”

She said she is now living her life with a new purpose: ending gun violence.

“I am going to continue to advocate for those that were at the school, I am going to continue to advocate for ending gun violence and keeping these guns out of the hands of the people who do not need them,” she said. “I am going to continue to be an advocate for that until my last breath. That is one of the most important things for me.”

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