One year later, families remember victims of April 3 downtown mass shooting

A year ago this week, six people lost their lives in a mass shooting in downtown Sacramento. Gunfire broke out just before 2 a.m., as the bars and clubs let out near K and 10th street, and on Monday night families and friends of the victims are scheduled to remember their loved ones.

Empact is a local grassroots organization that focuses on social justice led activism for issues varying from crisis response, youth advocacy and civic engagement. Leia Schenck is one of the group’s organizers and spoke with CapRadio’s Mike Hagerty to discuss its work remembering the victims and sustaining awareness about gun violence.

CapRadio: You have a vigil scheduled on Monday, April 3, which is the one-year mark since the fatal mass shooting. Can you share what you have planned?

Leia Schenck: By the request of the families that we've worked with this past year, they've requested to be at 10th and K [Streets], and they're wanting it to be a remembrance of the life and legacy of their loved ones that were lost. They really just want community support. They want to be able to remember their loved ones in a positive light. And so we're going to amplify that for them and make that happen as best we can. 

We have other families coming out that have lost their children to community gun violence, as well. We also have Mayor [Darrell] Steinberg coming out and [Council member] Katie Valenzuela. 

And as I've done this whole past year, [we will] just continue to be there. When they call me, when they call me, I show up, and whatever they need me to do for them. That's the advocacy work that we do and that's what I'm here for. 

A lot of things were promised in the aftermath of the tragedy a year ago, promises made about addressing the underlying conditions that led to violence. In your view, has much been done? 

As long as we keep having people that are killed on our streets of Sacramento, then I say that enough hasn't been done. 

I can't say exactly what they've done, because we don't know. That's not something that they've shared with us. But I can tell you that the violence on the streets, whether it be gun violence or whether it be other weapons of choice, it's still occurring. And so that means we have a long way to go as far as to clean-up our streets and making it safe for the community. 

An awful lot of attention was paid to the mass shooting because of the location of the violence near the heart of downtown. How much of the talk at the time was about solutions to the underlying problems and how much was about trying to protect downtown business interests? 

That's really what it comes down to. It's a play-work district. You know, it's the state capital of California. It's a tourist attraction. And really what it came down to was more [of] that, than the regard for human lives that were lost that night. And not just the six that lost their lives, but 12 others that were shot, and then the dozens that were there that witnessed it, that were running for their lives. I mean, they too are victims in this, as well. 

To me, it's less about the glorification of being downtown and having people come down and spend their money … but humanity. Lives were lost, and there's a reason for that. And until we get to the structural root cause of the reasoning for that, then we can't promise the community that this won't happen again. 

Do you intend the vigil to be an annual event on April 3? 

Whatever the family wants to do. If they want to do this every year, we call these anniversaries, then I would be more than happy to do it every year for them. I do it with other families, as well. So if that's what they want, we definitely will do that. When we tell these stories, when we talk about what happened that day, we have to remember that these are human lives that did not deserve to die that night. And they should still be here with us today.