'I don’t like going outside no more': 29% jump in juvenile shootings leaves families shaken

Cameron Knight | Cincinnati Enquirer

Show Caption Hide Caption Juvenile shootings jump 29% in Cincinnati Kie’asiah Sanks was shot on Sept. 1, a Sunday, outside her apartment on Hawaiian Terrace in Mount Airy. Her mother, Kisha Wallington, is still traumatized by that day.

She’s lost count of how many of people she knows who have been shot.

It’s more than 10.

Kie’Asiah Sanks is 16. She’s a junior at Aiken High School. She runs track and cheers.

On Sunday, Sept. 1, she was shot outside her family’s Mount Airy apartment. Her mother, inside the apartment at the time, remembers hearing 30 gunshots.

When the shooting stopped, Kie’Asiah ran inside. It was her sister who first saw the blood.

The copper jacket of the bullet was lodged in her jaw.

Kie’Asiah was just one of 34 juveniles shot in 36 incidents in Cincinnati in 2019 as of Dec. 26.

The most recent – on Christmas Day – left an 11-year-old girl hospitalized. She was struck by a stray bullet in West Price Hill during a shootout on Gilsey Avenue.

That’s about a 29 percent increase in shootings compared to 2018, but lower than 2015 and 2016.

According to the Cincinnati Police Department, as many as 69 percent of the juvenile victims – like Kie'Asiah and the 11-year-old – were not specifically targeted by the shooters.

About two weeks after being shot, Kie’Asiah heard the news that a friend had been killed. She grew up with Dante Harrington in Hawaiian Terrace, but the 17-year-old had moved away.

Dante was gunned down on Adams Street in Lincoln Heights.

His funeral was held Oct. 5, the same day as Kie’Asiah’s homecoming. She paid her respects in the morning, then came home to get dressed up. Others who knew Dante stayed around reminiscing about their friend.

Around 9 p.m. while she was at the dance, a 17-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl were both shot right in front of Kie'Asiah's apartment. They survived.

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Nearly half of the victims would not cooperate with police

All these teens are included in the 34 juveniles who were shot this year. Of those, 29 survived.

In conjunction with the Cincinnati Police Department, The Enquirer examined never-before-compiled statistics from across the city about all shootings with juvenile victims prior to November, a total of 29 separate incidents.

Arrests had been made in eight of the shootings, but 16 victims refused to cooperate with investigators. Experts say victims who refuse to cooperate could be protecting others or could fear retaliation for speaking out.

Only six of the victims have confirmed ties to gangs or groups involved in illegal activity.

Twenty of the victims had prior contacts with police.

Police could confirm that only four of the victims were involved in criminal activity at the time they were shot.

At least four of the victims were shot as a result of suspected illegal drug activity.

In more than a third of the incidents, there was more than one victim shot.

There were also two teens who have been shot more than once this year.

Daquez Robinson, 16, was shot once in April in Mount Auburn, then again in October in Walnut Hills.

Elijah Clark, also 16, was shot in March in East Price Hill, then again in May in the same neighborhood. Officials said one of those shootings could have been accidental.

Of the five teens who were fatally shot this year in Cincinnati, one, 15-year-old Jordan Lara, was killed in self-defense in June during a robbery, police said. (His alleged accomplice in the robbery, another teen, has been charged in his death though Lara was shot by an adult.)

The deaths of the remaining four — Anthony Hinton, Cameron Franklin, Eric Shields and Kesean Banks — were all homicides.

Arrests have been made in two of these deaths. Perry Cameron, 27, is accused of killing Anthony. Donte Tompkins, 15, is accused of killing Kesean.

'It seems like the whole city is on fire'

Miranda Jones and her 17-year-old son Tamarion Jones live together in Roselawn where they moved from Chicago more than three years ago.

On July 23, Tamarion was a cousin’s birthday at a relative’s house in Kennedy Heights.

He was outside on the porch when shots were fired from a passing vehicle.

Tamarion was grazed in the arm.

Now, just a few years after moving to Cincinnati because it was safer than Chicago, Jones is looking to move again.

“It seems like the whole city is on fire, and its been that way for a few summers,” she said.

She said in Chicago, people with children largely knew how to keep safe, but it’s different in Cincinnati.

“Y’all ain’t ready for this,” Jones said. “Kids are used to being free.”

As for Tamarion, he just wants it behind him and tends not to go out much because he’s scared, Jones says.

'There ain’t no giving up'

Kie'Asiah is scared, too. Loud noises cause her to jump up and run. Slow-moving cars on her street do the same thing.

“I don’t like going outside no more,” she said. “I don’t like walking to the bus stop. I just don’t like being outside.”

Kie’Asiah says many of the people she knows who have been shot were completely innocent, but has no illusions that others she knows are not.

She says much of the violence stems from drugs.

Kie’Asiah and her mother, Kisha Wallington, say nothing has changed in their neighborhood since the shootings this fall. Gunfire is still frequent.

Wallington is trying to move her family out of Hawaiian Terrace: “Just a fresh start so I’ll be able to sleep at night."

The mother of three still has nightmares about when her daughter was shot.

Wallington said Hawaiian Terrace needs around-the-clock police details.

“I think we’d be a little more safer and at ease knowing that if there’s someone out here,” she said. “They’d be afraid to come down here shooting.”

None of this has stopped Kie’Asiah from planning her future.

She wants to run track in college, and eventually, own a running business. But then there’s fashion design, hair and nails. And there’s helping the homeless and counseling kids who are bullied.

“I want to do a lot of things,” she said. “I know I’m going to do it. There ain’t no giving up.”