Gun violence ruined my community. As a reporter, I try to help people who suffer as I did

I'll never forget the first time the Earth stood still.

A 15-year-old boy had died in an attempted robbery. He was killed for a new pair of shoes he carried as he waited at a bus stop in Hillcrest Heights, MD. His murder happened around the corner from my house, just a 10-minute walk from Southeast, D.C. I didn’t know who it was until I watched the news that night. I saw his picture blown up on my bright TV screen. The projecting light devoured the room but it couldn't devour the darkness and dread that I started to feel.

The first time I had met Charles we were maybe 10 years old attending Francis Scott Key Elementary School. He was new to the school and hit it off with the other kids on his first day. He cracked jokes, enjoyed gym, and got along well with our teachers. We weren’t close friends, but I had seen him grow into a teenager. It didn’t hurt less to know that a classmate was killed for something so minuscule.

When I went to school the next day, you’d think that school was not in session at all. Suitland High School was normally filled with gossip, boisterous laughter, jokes, smiles, and even fights. That ceased to exist that day. Instead, the halls were filled with sorrow, anger, and confusion. Most of all, the students felt hopeless.

We had started that school year off with an assembly of about 300 freshmen. I never forgot what an administrator said to us at the beginning of the event. He said, “look to your left, look to your right. Some of the people filling these seats won’t be here next year.”

Did he mean that some students won't be present because of tragedy? Of course not. But it didn't help to know that by our next assembly, Charles would no longer be around to fill one of those seats. He was not the first child to be murdered in my community but his murder would be the first to hit close to home.

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By the age of 18, I was no longer carefree. The earth stood still three times since my freshman year. Three more of my friends died of gun violence and the steadily rising violence became my motivation to get out of my neighborhood. People were getting robbed and shot. Some kids were fighting against a group of three or more. Drive-bys started to happen more often. We were all scared.

You didn’t know who knew who. What if word got back that you started to help the police to get killers off the street or that you were talking about an incident that happened in your neighborhood. Would there be a chance of someone shooting at you when you walk to the grocery store? Will the police find your killer? No one felt safe.

I had lived in my neighborhood since I was four months old and knew it like the back of my hand. So I thought. Slowly, I’d see For Sale signs in my neighbors' yards, and soon, I realized that the community I once knew was becoming a stranger to me. And it hurt like hell.

I could no longer visit playgrounds or casually walk my dog or walk to see friends. As it became more dangerous, I stopped going outside. Some teens were involved in gang-related beefs. If they wanted out, it wouldn't be easy because they knew too much. Others tried to stay out of the way and always looked over their shoulder.

Some neighbors spoke out against the behavior, but many would remain silent. It was like overnight we had become a “dangerous neighborhood” and all of us were thrown under the same umbrella.

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In the midst of losing friends, I stayed focused on school and after graduation, I enrolled at Prince George’s Community College. My goal was to become a community leader, however, it switched to journalism when I joined the student newspaper. At first, I didn't like to watch or read the news. People who looked like me only made the news as a victim or a criminal. I wanted to see stories about the people within the community and the efforts that were being made to stop all the nonsense that made it nearly impossible to sit outside.

I walked around interviewing students about everything from social issues to religion. They all had different backgrounds. I wrote stories that explained who they were and how issues affected them and their everyday lives. That experience changed my outlook on the media. One of my stories followed a Muslim student's everyday life attending a community college. One part that really resonated with other students was her anxiety about hearing a terrorist joke. It gave insight into how those jokes affected her day and other Muslim students were appreciative of the representation when they saw her bright face on the front page.

At 22, I graduated from Morgan State University. I had lost two more friends to shootings. The following year, I moved to York, Pa., to become a reporter at York Daily Record. My position would be something different from past coverage. Instead of reporting on solely crime, I would focus on the people who are affected by it. I thought I had gotten away from the hurt that comes with losing my community and friends to violence. But I haven't. It plays a heavy role in who I am as a reporter.

As a professional, it is hard for me to write stories about tragedies. There is this thin line between my personal life and my job. To know that I'd be talking to a mother who lost her baby to a shooting or stabbing or beating, and then turn on the news and see that another child in my neighborhood was shot, affects me greatly. I remember seeing posts about my friends on social media and seeing their faces flash across my screen. To me, I had lost a friend. To the world, they were another statistic. But they were much more than that and they deserved to be remembered for who they really were.

The people who are suffering because of bad things happening in the community are just as important as the people who do those bad things. Their stories, much like those of the people in my community, are often swept under the rug.

I am now a reporter. I help people tell their stories. I understand the skepticism the community has when the media approaches them. We weren't represented well in the past.

But there are people who deserve to be heard and have their stories told.

There is a kid out there who probably has the cards stacked against them but no matter the challenge, they conquer it. There is a family that experienced being homeless, purchased a new home, and wants to share their story to put an end to bias. There is a person who was murdered and deserves to be remembered for who they were in life. But I can't tell those stories without the community.

Katia Parks covers public safety issues for the York Daily Record. Please feel free to reach her atKParks@ydr.com. Follow her on Facebook (@Katia Parks), Twitter (@parksphoto), and Instagram (@katia.l.parks).