Victim Advocacy Group Using Prayer To Combat Rising Baltimore Murders
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- As the number of murders continues to rise in Baltimore, one group is taking an old approach in the battle--using prayer.
Marcus Washington has more on the "Prayers for Peace."
They are names that are unfamiliar to many, but those names represent a growing deadly problem of violence in Baltimore City.
"When you take lives, you don't just take their lives, you take the lives of everybody. He's got a daughter he'll never see. Two of them. One born. She never knew her father. It's hard," said Tiffany Wright, a victim's sister.
Wright and her mother know the pain too well, after her brother, Earl Maurice Wright, was killed in December, leaving three children. One of those children was born months after his death.
"Every time we see a news report, the numbers is what jumps out at me. And then talking to families of others who've been murdered, it hurts," said Kathryn Cooper Nicholas, Sisters Saving Our City organizer.
Kathryn Cooper Nicholas is the mother of one of the murdered victims and organizer of the Sisters Saving Our City "Prayer for Peace" and crime victim remembrance rally in front of City Hall.
"We need to do something to memorialize homicide victims for their families, and let the larger community realize this has to stop," said Cooper Nicholas.
In front of City Hall, there's a sea of names planted--more than 420--all victims killed here in Baltimore between January of 2014 and August of this year.
"Stop the violence and to get justice for all 400 of these people out here today," said Wright.
On this Labor Day, there are 227 homicides in the city to date--a number and pain that families say has to stop, so a city can heal.
With the recent homicide rates, Baltimore has become the second most violent city in the country behind St. Louis.
