Pittsburgh mayor Ed Gainey released a statement on Wednesday, just after noon commenting on the fatal shooting outside Oliver Citywide Academy just before 7:30 a.m. that left one student dead and another student in custody.
Both the victim and suspect are under 18.
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The statement reads in full:
Pittsburgh, please join me in prayer for the family, friends, and the entire Oliver Citywide Academy community as they are once again mourning a young life taken by gunfire. I’m proud of the quick response by our Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, who were on the scene within minutes and were able to apprehend the suspect. Thank you for your continued work in making Pittsburgh safe.
No child should ever have to fear going to school, and no parent should ever worry about their child never coming home. We are working with our Community Violence Intervention teams to provide help and support to students, and we will do all that we can to connect the family to support services.
As a society, we have to reclaim our children, and we have to begin putting our children first. We have cultivated a culture of violence and death, celebrated guns, and glorified shooting. We have failed as a country to stop the proliferation of guns, and it is far too easy for a young person to get those guns and retaliate in the way our culture has glorified it.
Pittsburgh, we can and must do better. We have to cultivate a new culture, create a new path forward for our kids, and we are committed to investing in our kids to provide them with hope for a better tomorrow and a future that doesn’t end with bullets and gunfire.
If you want to be a part of our work to end violence in our city, join us. Call us. We are willing to work with everyone who wants to be a part of the solution.