PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Seventeen-year-old Cavance Snaith feels the pain of the last week acutely. His friend was shot and killed at an Ogontz bus stop on Monday — one of 11 teens shot in the last week alone.
“It’s just really sad to see someone I used to play baseball with as a child and during quarantine murdered,” Snaith, a junior at Constitution High and student representative on the Philadelphia School Board, said tearfully.
Emotions from a week of gun violence spilled over into Thursday night’s school board meeting. Not only did Snaith know the teen who was killed on Monday, but he choked up when he recalled his own experience with gun violence.
“It’s very personal to my heart because when I was robbed at gunpoint last year in February, I didn’t know what was going to happen to me,” he said. “It was a very scary moment to see my life literally flash before my eyes. So I understand.”
There were four shootings on or near SEPTA buses four days in a row. On Sunday, a man was shot and killed as he stepped off a bus in Oxford Circle. On Monday in Ogontz, Imhotep Institute Charter High School student Dayemen Taylor was shot and killed as he boarded a Route 6 bus. Five people, including three teens, were also wounded. On Tuesday, a man on a Route 79 bus was shot and killed by an exiting passenger in South Philly.
And on Wednesday, eight students were shot, one of them critically, while waiting at a bus stop in Northeast Philadelphia. Three gunmen and their getaway driver are still at large. Police are investigating whether Wednesday’s shooting was related to 17-year-old Taylor’s death.
The psychological scars from something like that, Snaith said, remain.
“I experienced something like this. I wasn’t physically hurt, but it really does mess with you mentally,” he said. “I’m 17 years old. There are 17-year-olds, 15-year-olds, 14-year-olds who are getting murdered in the city of Philadelphia. This should not be a common occurrence on the news.”
Outgoing school board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez said the violence is “not normal and not OK.”
“I believe there is will in this city to get it right once and for all. But that’s what it will take — will. We will not ‘thoughts and prayers’ our way out of this,” she said.
“The game has fundamentally changed. [Superintendent Tony] Watlington, when we interviewed you for superintendent, we never asked you what your transferable skills are to deal with the shooting deaths of dozens of children a week,” she emphasized. “This isn’t what we brought you here to do.”