It’s been a week now since gunfire erupted in one of Clinton’s neighborhoods, the Eastover Terrace Apartments.
All too often, young people tend to turn to gun violence to solve any sort of problem, whether it be a spat with a girlfriend or boyfriend, a disagreement with a neighbor, or being bullied at school. A motive for last week’s shooting has yet to be uncovered, but a suspect has been arrested and charged in the incident. Whatever reason someone believed they had to shoot first and resolve a perceived issue later, resorting to violence is never the answer.
While in this case, thankfully, no one was killed, shooting someone and inflicting serious injury is a matter to be taken very seriously.
Once a bullet propels from the chamber, there is no undoing it. The men who were injured will likely carry scars for the rest of their lives. If convicted, the suspect currently charged could spend decades behind bars. Was pulling a trigger out of haste, anger, whatever, really worth it? We seriously doubt it.
Everyone involved in the incident was under the age of 30, and some were barely out of their teens. It’s a sad reality that some of them may not live to see 30 if they stay on the trajectory they’re currently on. And for what? It’s hard to say, but we’d be willing to bet that whatever the shooter’s issue was with his or her victims, it wasn’t worth anyone losing their life or physical well-being — not to mention the trauma it caused innocent neighbors who were just going about their usual Monday afternoon when the shots rang out, sending people running, quite literally, for their lives.
If you live a more privileged life, it’s easy to sit back and judge the people of this community, a Section 8 housing development. We’ve certainly seen a few social media comments that have said it wasn’t surprising, that the neighborhood has always been “bad.” It’s likely that when those privileged few drive past the apartment complex, they don’t even look over and see the real people who are living there day to day. Perhaps they lock their doors and avoid eye contact. Maybe they even shake their heads, complain about how they’re supposedly supporting the lower classes who, in their minds, are all on welfare and food stamps. We’ve heard it all before.
But, we implore you to put yourself in others’ shoes. You never know what circumstances may have led someone to have to live in public housing. Maybe they had a good job, and lost it due to a business closing or downsizing. Maybe they or a loved one got very sick and had to make sacrifices in order to pay their bills. Maybe they’re living in generational poverty, never able to make ends meet.
Whatever the case, violence in lower income neighborhoods is never a given; it should never be expected. It should be dealt with, as Clinton police and Sampson County sheriff’s deputies have done, and we all should do whatever we can, within our power, to try to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Pray for the people, pray for justice and pray that you don’t someday end up in their shoes.