On the heels of a yet another fatal shooting on Feb. 6, one Brooklyn community came together Sunday to call for an end to gun violence on their streets.
Canarsie residents gathered on Feb. 12 at a rally for recent shooting victims in the southern Brooklyn neighborhood: 20-year-old Ethen Flowers, who was gunned down last week near the corner of Paerdegat 1st Street and East 79th Street and 40-year-old Billy Jean Hippolyte, a father who was fatally shot last month near the corner of E. 83rd Street and Flatlands Avenue, not far from where Flowers was killed.
During the showing, Hippolyte’s two siblings, Naomi and Ruth Hippolyte, called not only for peace, but also for funding to help get guns off the city’s streets.
“Why are these guns coming to our community?” the two asked. “We need this funding to come in. We are asking for peace.”
While shootings in Brooklyn’s 69th Precinct, which serves the Canarsie community, are reportedly down year-to-date, elected officials on Sunday urged the city to look beyond the data — especially when that data directly impacts a community.
