Turning tragedy into triumph; mother vows to make son’s life count to end gun violence

Police have vowed to beef up patrols in Longs as faith leaders and community members strive to mentor youths, but the battle to keep guns out of the hands of kids won’t be easily solved.

It was a bullet from a gun fired by a 19-year-old that killed 19-year-old Levi Moody in Longs on Nov. 12. Two others were injured in the shooting, according to an Horry County police report.

Two more shootings erupted at a nightclub in Longs earlier that day. Two more were injured. Police have responded to at least 10 shootings in Longs so far this year as a list of victims continues to grow.

“We’ve got to stop the violence,” said Veronica Thompson at a packed memorial service for her son, Levi Moody, on Saturday. “There were many children running around playing on (the street) that day.”

Other mothers could be grieving as well, she added. And in other parts of the county they are grieving as mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers from all walks of life and all affected by similar tragedies rally in a chorus to end gun violence.

Grieving mothers spoke before a crowd in the Myrtle Beach Train Depot Monday night, pleading for the community’s help to turn their tragic losses into a triumph over gun violence. Myrtle Beach, too, has suffered as the cry for change and pleas for peace echo beyond any one community.

In Loris and Longs

“I just want our community to pull together as a whole because we’ve got so many youth in our community with nothing to do and when you’ve got nothing to do, something’s going to happen from behind,” Thompson said last week. We need to “get these guns out of their hands and let’s start doing more things with our youth in the community, giving them something to do, showing them more love … so we want have any more tragedies like this.”

Thompson has pledged to turn the tragic death of her son, who was shot and killed as an innocent bystander that day on Freemont Road, into a new fight to end gun violence.

“We’ve got to be careful with these guns. … You don’t know what to do with them,” Thompson told a crowd of young people at her son’s celebration of life service. “You’re just looking at the TV rap videos and you just want to be hard or you just want to pop it off and be ‘bout it, ‘bout it. But you’ve got to know what you’re doing with those weapons. … If you don’t know what you’re doing with it, put it down. It shouldn’t even be in your possession at all.”

The “senseless violence that we’re experiencing and gun play and mimicking gangs … where friends and loved ones are getting hurt and taken away from us, it’s time for us as a community to say no more,” Pastor Andy Anderson of The Overflow Fellowship Church in Little River said last week. “And it’s time for our young people to decide to say no more.”

Anderson, along with the members of his church, mentor youths through afterschool programs, extracurricular activities, field trips and other outreach programs. The programs are aimed at showing youth from troubled environments a better side of life.

In the teenage group called “Royalty” at his church, parishioners have seen a seven-year success rate of 100 percent high school graduation, no teen pregancies and in April, the group’s first medical doctor will finish his residency.

“With our congregation we’re just trying to get starfish back in the ocean,” he said, but there are a lot of starfish.

And mentors can’t be with their protégés 24/7.

Constant battle

“There is an element that we try to snatch those guys from but we’re in competition,” Anderson said last week. “My sermons they say are good, but if somebody’s fighting in the streets it’s hard to keep that attention.”

“The prevailing culture is I’ve got to fit in to be cool with these guys and especially if I’m a leader, there’s an expectation, a gravitational pull that says you’ve got to get your hands dirty with us or you’re not down,” Anderson acknowledged. “If you move and try to separate yourself you can get ostracized. Our kids are having to deal with it all of the time. You make good grades or you try to speak English properly, you’re being too white.”

Anderson says it’s a constant battle and they fight it on all fronts.

“That allure to fit in, to be cool and to be one of the guys, that’s what we battle with,” he said.

“This is not Playstation. It’s not X-box,” Anderson said. “The folks (you shoot) don’t get up. … We have to teach our teens, our young people that guns play for keeps. And we have to do something to stop that allure” of street culture.

But police, faith leaders and community members agree it will take more than one of them and more than one side to solve the problem.

Law enforcement, prosecutors, public defenders, social workers, educators, business leaders, coaches, community members and clergy are all needed to tackle the problems that fuel the violence.

“It’s everybody’s business,” Anderson said. “You can’t just do it with a police officer in the community. It is much more complex. And as a society we’ve got to set some new priorities.”

Horry County police Chief Joe Hill says he plans to work with other members of the community to stem the tide of gun violence and he asks for the community’s assistance in the fight.

This story was originally published November 22, 2016 at 8:05 PM with the headline "Turning tragedy into triumph; mother vows to make son’s life count to end gun violence."