Anti-violence rally inspires action
Ed Cope
Vanessa Byrd of Masontown, who lost two children to murders in 2001 and last year, gives a “mother’s perspective” during Thursday’s Uniontown Area Anti-Violence Prayer Vigil held at Uniontown Area High School auditorium. Numerous people spoke out against violence and prayed for the community. Gabriella Locke of Uniontown organized the event.
Gabriella Locke of Uniontown opens the anti-violence prayer vigil in Uniontown Thursday.
Vanessa Byrd seemed cool and collected when she started speaking Thursday about the loss of her two children — victims of senseless violence.
“Guns — it seems so easy to pick one up and shoot somebody, but why?” she asked a crowd of about 100 people gathered at the Uniontown Area Anti-Violence Prayer Vigil at Uniontown Area High School. “They act like it is so easy to take someone’s life, but God is in everyone’s life. It seems like your conscience would just eat you up. The violence is just so senseless. By talking about this, what happened to me, I might be able to help someone else who is going through a loss.”
Byrd’s voice cracked with emotion as she vividly recalled how her daughter and son were murdered in cold blood in two separate incidents on Water Street in Masontown. Her daughter Joslyn was shot on Feb. 4, 2001. More than 10 years later, Byrd’s son, Leon, was killed on Aug. 16 last year.
Byrd said moments before her daughter was killed, she heard a medical helicopter flying above. When Byrd went outside, she knew something wrong.
“There was yellow police tape around her house — I knew Joslyn was there,” she said.
A mother’s nightmare – her mind’s eye recalled how her 21-year-old daughter was taken to Uniontown Hospital and later to a Pittsburgh hospital. So powerful were these memories that Byrd stopped looking at the audience, but deep within herself as she spoke.
A single tear moved slowly down Byrd’s cheek and hung there unable or unwilling to move as she talked about seeing the dried blood on her daughter’s face and hair as she lay dying in that hospital bed. She had been shot in the face – there was nothing the doctors could do. Visions of her daughter’s funeral seared enduring images into the audience.
But Byrd’s story was not over. For a moment, Byrd was able to reign in control of her grief when she started talking about how her 35-year-old son Leon was gunned down on Water Street on his birthday in August last year. Byrd said he was shot in the back and in the face.
Emotions overcame Byrd as she spoke of her son in that hospital bed.
“He was laying there — I wanted to say get of bed; you are not dead,” she said. “It was so hard. I blamed God over and over. I thought I was cursed or something. Another one of my children was dead. Why me?”
Byrd started crying again when asked aloud to either God or those who use violence, “How could you do that to someone?”
Byrd then melted away and could not continue. Several people went to help her to her seat and console her.
There was silence for a moment or two as the crowd processed this very real tragedy. No one could escape the gut wrenching emotion that brought home the hard truths of the vigil.
When the Rev. John Harris of Shiloh Church of God in Christ spoke next, he offered words about God’s wisdom.
“Nothing happens to us that Jesus doesn’t know about,” he said. “We have to trust in God.”
The Rev. Alfred Thompson of St. Paul’s AME Church in Uniontown said the rally and prayer vigil was necessary for the community to come together to take a stand against violence because no one seems to be doing anything about it.
“The police are doing everything they can, but it is going to require community involvement,” he said. “We need to say enough to the killing and enough to the gangs.”
Gabriella Locke said she organized the event as a way to start an anti-violence movement. She coordinated the event after learning about a man who was killed in the city on Mother’s Day.
“I think this will make people more aware of the problem and bring the community together,” she said. “The community taking a stand will make a difference.”