On Tuesday, this reporter attended plaintive funeral services for 22-year-old Deivon McGee, a local man who became the city's 49th homicide when he was gunned down outside a taco stand on Oct. 20.
The service was in many ways similar to others I've attended over the last two years marking the end of the lives of young men and boys killed in senseless street violence. Kids wore shirts with McGee's visage printed on them. Pastors abhorred the scourge of gun violence. Loved ones wept, sometimes while swaying to religious hymns.
Below, loved ones gripped in anguish/photo by Gabriel Acosta
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Political figures also turned out, in this case 6th Ward councilman Rikke Van Johnson and 5th Ward candidate Carolyn Tillman, to pay their respects to a slain resident.
One theme Tuesday was choice. Clergy urged those in the audience, many the young men and boys whose lives disproportionately wind up wasted by violence and prison, to take Jesus Christ into their lives and make the right decisions.
But while they did, the material reality was evident just beyond the church walls: The disinvested community, the under-performing schools, the paucity of job opportunities, even the decades-long infrastructural legacy of freeways that steer traffic away.
A sad story, for everyone.
Read the full story, with more pics, by clicking below ...

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