CINCINNATI — Advocates are talking about possible solutions after a Tuesday night drive-by shooting in Avondale injured a 15-year-old boy.
CPD Lt. Tim Lanter said District 4 units responded to 614 Prospect Place, near South Avondale Elementary School, for a reported shooting. Lanter said police received two Shot Spotters; One for 12 rounds, the other for 13 rounds. Officers were also in the area nearby and heard the shots.
Officers found a teen boy shot in the ankle. He was taken to UC with non-life threatening injuries, Lanter said.
The teen was with two other people when the drive-by occurred. The vehicle was driving eastbound on Prospect Place. The two others with the teen shot back at the vehicle. It's unclear if anyone in the vehicle was injured.
"It just continues to break my heart and lets me know that there's more work to be done," said Derrick Rodgers, with the Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio.
Rodgers serves as a community outreach advocate and director of the league's Urban Champion's Youth Program. He keeps his boots on the ground, responding to as many shooting scenes as possible.
"We get notifications from the city of Cincinnati every time there's a critical incident," he said.
Rodgers showed up Tuesday night, assessing the scene and it's impact on the neighborhood already marred by several shootings thus far this year.
City data shows Avondale tops the list of neighborhood shootings with at least a dozen. Those include 14 victims.
Six of the shootings happened within the past month, most of which sent bullets flying along Reading Road and near the elementary school.
"It's just been unfortunate that certain — some of these circumstances have been happening in Avondale for the past few shootings," Rodgers said. "With Avondale, they have great leadership. They definitely have plans to curb some of the youth violence this summer."
Up until six months ago, the Avondale Community Council had a safety team. It functioned at a task force for years, targeting gun violence in the neighborhood and focusing advocates in certain areas of the community in efforts to lower the trend.
The safety team was led by Vice Mayor Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney, but dissolved when she took on more responsibilities at City Hall, Rodgers said.
Now, the community council is taking steps to reestablish the team and get advocates back on the street.
"It's just that continued outreach," Rodgers said. "One of the things I say is, it always takes a village in order to raise our kids and that means building relationships with them. And I know not everyone can get to these hot spots where these relationships are — you have a few organizations like myself — that will actually go and canvassing and looking for those kids in those hot spots to engage and activate certain things in that space, but there's just more work to be done."
Rodgers said Urban League tries to connect with community youth through four pillars: post-secondary education, workforce development, advocacy and mental health.
Rodgers aims to instill those through the Urban Champion's Youth Program. It currently employees 70 teens from across the city for the summer, some of whom are from Avondale.
"Most of the time, when you see some of the youth, they only know the things that happen in their environment. So if they only see other youth that are getting in trouble, then guess what, chances are they may get into trouble and follow the same path," he said. "But if they have friends that come to a program such as our Urban Champions Program and they see the success of those individuals, then hey, they actually know somebody that they know on a first-name basis that they can say, 'Hey, if John did it, then I can do it too.'"
Lanter said no witnesses have come forward in Tuesday's shooting, and Lt. Jonathan Cunningham, CPD's public information officer, said CPD has no suspects as of Wednesday afternoon.
Lanter said there was cameras at the school that will help detectives with the investigation.
