Sunnyside peace walkers demand end to killing

Image 1 of 3

"No more bloodshed! No more bloodshed!"

A thousand times, the words rang out and then a thousand times more.

In Sunnyside, there's been too much killing, too many mothers left to grieve.

And so they walked for peace - Muslims and Christians, Preachers and teachers, the young and the not so young.

Their message of hope driven by a deep reverence for life and fueled by the lingering anguish of those whose children have been struck down by life halting bullets.

"We are going to march and we are going to show the faces of our children that were deposited in the earth because somebody made a crazy decision to pull a trigger on our children. We are here to say hell no, no more," said Calandrian Kemp whose son George was murdered.

"We are declaring peace on our streets," said Rev. E. A. Deckard, pastor of Green House Church.

"It's very important to these families that their sons and daughters not be forgotten," said Deric Muhammad, community activist and march organizer.

Grieving still for his lost son, George Kemp Sr. says he has since come face to face with a teenage gunman.

"Do I want to live or do I want to die? That's what he asked me. I could have killed him on the spot, but i let him go, I let him go. My God y'all need to stop!," said Kemp.

The Sunnyside community they walked through has drawn a ranking of second deadliest in the nation. With the lost lives, come hearts broken beyond full mending.

"I carried him nine months and I had to bury my son. That's some pain. That's pain I walk through every day," said Harolyn Minx whose son Rashad was also murdered.

It is that terrible cost the peace walkers say they must wipe out. The lost potential of lives cut short.

Councilman Dwight Boykins says it wasn't always so.

"We had families that believed in one another and that's what we are trying to bring back to those young people. Because we are losing too many young people," said Boykins.

The peace walkers have established the Facebook page "No More Bloodshed" for those interested in joining the struggle.