LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Walking through Chickasaw Park Wednesday, you may have come across a crowd of more than 100, taking a 54-second moment of silence. They did so for the 54 lives Louisville has lost in 2023, as of Monday.
Now, as of Wednesday, the number of homicide victims has risen to 55.
The gesture was a quiet yet deafening reminder.
"One thing about the Black community, we're never broke," Will Pitts, CEO of Millennium Enterprise Foundation, said. "This is us. You know, we wouldn't be here if we didn't believe in us."
Ron Jones, from the Office for Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods, said "there is nothing like the Black community."
"We will get together and, we will survive," Jones said. The organization hosted the event.
It comes four days removed from another mass shooting in Louisville, which hit the grounds of Chickasaw Park.
As of now, six people were shot -- two are dead and four were rushed to the hospital.
People echoed Sunday's pleas from community leaders and elected officials, who shared prayers and pleas for progress, in the park.
Those similar calls come from Louisville's youngest too.
"It's traumatizing for me to see kids my age pass away like, I think they need to make a law where they take all the guns and weapons away, take them away from these kids killing each other," sophomore A'amani Garth said.
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