TOLEDO, Ohio — A memorial service for all victims of gun violence in Toledo was held at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral on Wednesday night, co-hosted by the church and the Coalition for Peaceful Neighborhoods to honor and remember the victims while supporting family and loved ones, while attempting to come up with a solution to all the city's gun violence.
The service was especially relevant given the recent rash of teens accused of killing teens.
The conversations at the service, as well as the accompanying fellowship dinner, were filled with intense emotions and passionate calls for change. Parents were consoled by other grieving family members or parents and former gang members asked for forgiveness and vowed to help be the change.
"Every mother here, I would like to apologize to first, because I am the person you're talking to," Anton Parks Sr. said. "I am a gang member from south side Toledo. It actually took a lot of people to invest in me to change the mind frame of what was hurting me and traumatizing me."
North Toledo's Hope of Glory Church Pastor Rick Morris said he's proud of all the families, faith and community leaders, like Save Our Community, who attended the event.
Morris said Toledo needs to heal and, asked people to understand that positive change is not a foregone conclusion, but a real possibility. His assertions came from firsthand experience since he was a gang member in Michigan for many years.
"Being someone who was convicted of a violent crime myself, it took other people to reach me," Morris said. "We need to reach out to the shooters, they aren't going to come here."
Within the last two months, in the city of Toledo, three teens have been killed and three have been arrested on murder changes. Many at the event agreed, the city's youth need help.
Only one teenager was in attendance at the vigil: Brandon Awls Jr, whose father is a Save Our Community member. Awls said he wasn't surprised that he was the only teenager in attendance, but it still disappoints him.
"As you can see in this day and age, you can't go anywhere without protection," he said. "That's not cool. We have to live in God's image."
Claudia Kemp lost her son, 30-year-old Travis Glenn, to a stray bullet in October 2022. She said her son was a good man, father and person who wasn't involved in anything that would warrant violence against him. He was teaching his 3-year-old how to count when bullets began flying into his west Toledo home, eventually killing him.
Kemp was comforted being among other families grieving the loss of their children to gun violence.
Multiple other stories of people lost too young to violent crime were shared with a common theme of desperate calls for an end to gun violence.