“Death in Wilmington”

This long form journalism from theoutline.com, on Wilmington’s cycle of poverty, neglect and gun violence is worth your careful consideration.

On the night of December 16, 2017, Allen “Duffy” Samuels and his family were celebrating his daughter’s sweet sixteen at a hotel in Wilmington, Delaware, when his sister, Arica Samuels, received a call. “She screamed and ran out to the lobby,” he said. “The next thing we knew, we were at the hospital.”

Her son, Keanan, a freshman at Benedict College in South Carolina, was home for Christmas break. That night he had gone to a vigil for a friend, 19-year-old Barry White, who had been shot and killed that September on Wilmington’s north side. After Keanan left the vigil, a still-unidentified assailant opened fire sometime around 7:45 p.m. and hit Samuels in the neck and face area, according to the police. He died at the hospital later that night. He was 20 years old, and the 32nd and final gun-homicide victim of the year in the city of just over 70,000.

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In November 2015, the CDC released its report on Wilmington. The study looked at 569 Wilmington residents who were arrested for a “violent firearm crime” — a homicide, attempted homicide, aggravated assault, robbery with a firearm, or possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony — over the course of five and a half years, and found that 55 percent of those who were arrested were 25 or younger and 86 percent were 35 or younger.

The CDC found evidence of poverty’s effect on violence in Wilmington, as 86 percent of those surveyed were unemployed in the quarter preceding their arrest. But they also found evidence of the connection between experiencing violence and committing gun crimes; 48 percent of those arrested had been to the emergency room after being injured by someone else, the police, or themselves, and 28 percent had been investigated as a victim of child maltreatment. Thirteen percent had been to the emergency room for a gunshot wound themselves.