Chattanooga Times Free Press

GROVE STREET MURDERS NEED JUSTICE

It’s been a year now, and somebody knows something. The deaths of two women and the injuring of five others (ages 14-26) in a shooting on Grove Street on Sept. 25, 2021, a year ago Sunday, should not go without consequences. But to date it has.

LeBrecia Dews, 37, and Keniqua Hughes, 21, were shot in the wake of a block party reunion, “Back to the Westside,” a night of fun and laughter. The women were standing near their apartments on the Westside when a car drove by and someone or some ones opened fire. They died, and some of their friends were hurt. That’s one story. Another is that two groups of people were shooting at each other across the street, and those killed and injured were caught in the crossfire.

Police have made no arrests in the case, and those who know something, those who have heard something, those who saw something are keeping it to themselves. That’s not right.

The code of the street, of course, is not to snitch. After all, sometimes bad things happen to people who snitch. But the idea is to ban together — to lean on each other — to get the people who would intimidate and threaten neighbors and friends to maintain such a code of the street.

“We remember what happened to Bianca Horton (shot and killed in 2016 after agreeing to be a witness against the men accused of shooting her 1-year-old daughter) after the College Hill Courts killing,” Cassandra Robertson, one of the organizers of the reunion on the night of the shootings, said late last year. “We know retaliation is real. I don’t blame anyone for being afraid, but we can’t let this happen. We have to stand up and protect each other. We have to say that this is our neighborhood and we’re not letting it go out like this.”

The Westside community held a memorial for the two women at Renaissance Presbyterian Church over the weekend. Several community leaders reminded those in attendance of their duty, if they know something.

“I understand you being scared because you got to live in the community,” said Kevin Muhammad, the local National of Islam leader. “… Y’all know how to do it. You know how to tell them something without letting them know you told. We do it all the time. We know how to drop a dime on somebody and get up on out of there.”

“It’s a shame that you have to put out a reward to get people to talk in reference to getting information,” said Betty Maddox-Battle, founder and executive director of

G.R.I.E.V.E., an organization for grieving families. “A price should never be put on a life, so that’s why it’s important for the community to come up and tell something and let people know what happened to these young ladies.”

Battle, a former law enforcement officer who lost a son to gun violence in 1993, invited Deborah Rahmon — shot nine times by her husband — to be guest speaker for the event.

“I hope that gun violence just stops,” she told those assembled. “We talk about police brutality, but it’s sad when we’re shooting each other.”

Family members may bury their loved ones, but they undoubtedly keep a sickening, burning feeling in their bellies because they know the deaths of their moms or daughters or sisters or aunts or nieces happened for no reason and that the perpetrators are living their merry lives the way their relatives can no longer do.

Dews, for instance, left behind six children, children who will have to grow up without a mother to be their inspiration, their role model, their teacher and their comforter. She’d worked at a retirement home on Shallowford Road and had a daughter who’d just been accepted to Alabama A&M.

Hughes graduated in 2018 from The Howard School, where she had taken cosmetology training. She had started her own business, Pure Braids, and was hoping to move the business to Atlanta and get into celebrity hair braiding.

Chattanooga Police Chief Celeste Murphy attended the weekend memorial service and told media members days early that the case had not gone cold.

“We’re not stopping that investigation at all,” she said. “We’ve had people say ‘I saw this’ or ‘I know this,’” Evette Hughes, the mother of Keniqua, told this newspaper in December 2021, “but no one is willing to go and say that in front of a jury. So if we can find that one person who is willing to do that, out of the 100 and something that was out there — that would be wonderful.”

A $21,000 reward is available for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooter or shooters in this case.

Chattanooga had 34 homicides in 2021, tied with 2020 for the most this century. If perpetrators of all these crimes are caught, chances are there will be fewer of them in the future.

The shooter or shooters of Dews and Hughes have had a year of freedom. It’s time to end that. If you know something, say something. It’s time.

OPINION

en-us

2022-09-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-09-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.timesfreepress.com/article/281844352508510

WEHCO Media