Myrtle Beach community called to unite in war on gun violence

Pastor Elizabeth Bowens lost her son to gun violence on April 9, 2005.

Tony Hemingway was struck by a gunman, who returned to a nightclub he had just been ushered out of, Bowens said. Hemingway was bouncing at the club that night when the bullet struck him and took his life. He was 32 years old.

Barbara Hightower lost her daughter to gun violence in 2006. And within the span of a year, Kendra Keel, lost two sons to gunfire from 2006 to 2007.

“Enough is enough,” said Bowens, who formed the S.C. Mothers Against Violence. Bowens, Hightower and Keel now share their painful stories through the club they say no mother wants to be a part of, in efforts to inspire local communities to come together to stop the threat that has ended so many young lives.

“For 10 years, two months and 17 days I’ve been trying to mend a broken heart,” Keel said. “I don’t want another mother to feel the way I do.”

The women joined a forum of speakers from law enforcement to the solicitor’s office to city leaders and educators in a gun violence awareness program that packed the inside of the Myrtle Beach Train Depot Monday night.

“Fourteen-year-old boys are dying on our streets right now,” said Deputy Solicitor Scott Hixson of the 15th Circuit Solicitor’s Office that covers Horry and Georgetown counties.

“Robberies are no longer people walking up to each other and taking,” Hixson said. “Someone’s getting a gun in their face.”

Hixson pleaded with the community to come forward and to report suspicious activity that may involve guns to police.

“We’re not trying to take guns from regular (law-abiding) citizens,” he said. But the solicitor’s office is committed to making sure people convicted of violent crimes in which firearms are used get the maximum jail time, he added.

“They won’t stop until we stop them,” said Gerod King, a special agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

More than 900 firearms have been illegally taken from gun dealers licensed by the ATF in North Carolina and South Carolina this year, he said.

“Once a firearm is taken through illegal means ... there’s a high probability it may never come back to the legal owner and it will probably go into a subsequent life of crime,” King said. “What we’re talking about is the initial crime of taking firearms. That’s alarming. But what’s scary is all of the subsequent crimes that we potentially could have from these guns getting on the streets into the hands of criminals.”

Educator Cookie Goings told the crowd that she didn’t want to see the gun violence that has killed so many young people become the norm.

“Myrtle Beach is our community. That’s the big umbrella and all of the spokes under there, those are our neighborhoods,” Goings said. “If one (spoke) is broken we’re all broken and this umbrella could collapse.”

Lt. Joey Crosby of the Myrtle Beach Police Department said that one of the common ways guns get into the hands of criminals can “easily be prevented.”

“We have seen a significant increase in burglary autos in our area in which someone has left a gun in a car and it’s been stolen,” Crosby said. And many cars that have been broken into were unlocked at the time. Police encourage the public to make sure firearms are properly secured and that car doors are locked.

“Some of the most vivid memories I have in my career as a violent crime investigator and as an officer is sitting down with the coroner and looking a family in the eye saying ‘You just lost a loved one,’” Crosby said. “It touches me not only because I wear a badge, but because I have a daughter. I will never forget their face. I will never forget the tears that run down their face. And I will never, ever forget the plea that every single one of them had. It was, ‘please find out who did this to my baby.’”

In a final show of unity and a call for the community to come together in a stance against gun violence, Crosby asked the crowd in the train depot to stand if they wanted to see the violence end. Everyone stood.

This story was originally published November 21, 2016 at 9:11 PM with the headline "Myrtle Beach community called to unite in war on gun violence."