The murder victim was 25-year old Jamail E. Johnson of Youngstown. Most of the 11 injured were shot in the foot. The men were arrested and charged with aggravated murder, shooting into a home, and felonious assault, according to Chief Jimmy Hughes of the Youngstown Police Department.
"These guys were in the location for a little while before the shooting occurred," he said. "Something happened that they became unhappy. They had some type of altercation."
This tragedy takes me back to thoughts I've had after being on a college campus for the past 17 years. The challenge of surviving as a black male in America is that it's not simply a matter of making sure you make the right decisions, you are also affected by the decisions being made by people around you. My best friend was murdered in front of his daughter when I was in my mid-twenties, and he wasn't doing anything wrong. I've also had to dodge a life-threatening situation or two in my day. Even now, I have to avoid certain relatives or friends who might put me in harm's way.
As you send your boys off to college, remember to teach them that almost nothing good happens at Saturday night parties in fraternity houses. Although homicide is incredibly rare on college campuses, it is not uncommon for students to be raped, arrested for rape, assaulted, caught drinking and driving or to die from alcohol poisoning, with frat houses being the most common scene of the crime. Of course the men who committed the crime (to my knowledge) were not members of Omega Psi Phi, so the fraternity should not be held responsible (although there may be some legal implications here). But the excessive alcohol consumption on college campuses has created an environment in which lives are ruined on a regular basis.
This murder also takes me to the shooting of DJ Henry, a Pace University football player who was killed by police at a night club. This is not the first, nor the last shooting of a young black male on a college campus that I've written about this year, with the shooting taking place at either a party or a night club. We must take a second to reconsider the environment within which these young men are expected to live, help them to become more conscious of the risks, and bring back the old fashioned notion that it's OK to spend weekends in college studying instead of partying with volatile and questionable strangers. We must also find ways to confront gun manufacturers who somehow allow illegal weapons to flood the streets in black communities, undermining the safety of us all.
When I was in college, I saw quite a few situations where someone was injured or could have been killed. I've seen guns carried into house parties, and I've had friends who died young. After seeing far too many of my friends become alcoholics or destory their lives in some other way, I decided that I would commit myself to breaking the cycle of dysfunctional behavior that I witnessed all around me. It worked out nicely, and that's why I encourage you to tell your kids that they don't have to follow the crowd.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and author of the book, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About College." To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.