The ripple effects of gun violence in Minnesota

This is part two of a two-part series of the impact of gun violence on Minnesotans. You can read part one here.

Gun violence, whether it be in a school, church or movie theater, doesn’t just affect the people who were there that day. The bullet ricochets, touching the lives of everyone around. 

LaTanya Black is unfortunately too familiar with the ways guns have changed the lives of hundreds in the state and many more across the nation. Black’s daughter, Nia Black, was shot and killed in a St. Paul parking lot in 2020 at the age of 23.

When that happened, Black felt that she was silently suffering, and that took a toll on her body.

“I physically ended up in the hospital on a liquid diet for 10 days. I was engulfed with lesions, a rash that broke out from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. They did not know why. Blood pressure was out of whack. Everything you could think of. My body went into an emotional shock,” Black said. 

After having experienced that, she wanted to create spaces for others who are dealing with similar tragedies. So she started the organization Mothers Against Community Gun Violence, and quickly realized how many people were dealing with the same pain she had. 

“I learned in the midst of all this is that families were hurting, children were hurting,” Black said. “Some mothers wake up and they can’t even see, it’s affected their vision. We have mothers that didn’t eat for over two years. We have one mother that drank nothing but Ensures (nutrition supplement drinks) for two years because (she was) so engulfed with pain. The mental, the physical, as well as just the emotional trauma that comes behind this type of devastating shock to the system. It rocks your entire being. I have tons of families that mentally and physically, their health was highly impacted.” 

In 2020, there were 550 victims of gun violence in Minneapolis. That number rose to 657 victims in 2021 and then went down to 544 in 2022 and 416 in 2023. And there’s a racial disparity. In 2023, roughly 79% of Minneapolis shooting victims were Black, and the percentage was higher — at 89% — for juvenile shooting victims. 

Firearm homicides are still high compared to pre-pandemic levels in Minneapolis and the state as a whole. An analysis of victims of gun violence statewide using data from the BCA showed that in the years 2021-2023, around 44% of the state’s gun violence victims were Black, while Black people make up only 7.6% of the state’s population. White people, on the other hand, make up around 82.6% of the state’s population, but a much lower percentage of the gun violence victims. 

“The most likely victim of a homicide is a young man of color. That is across the board, and Black men and Latino men are certainly overrepresented compared to population in Minnesota,” said Jillian Peterson, Ph.D., a professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Hamline University.

Changes in family dynamics

Black recalled how the pain of grief made it harder for some of the families she knows to continue their jobs and provide for their families. 

“There’s situations where families fall apart because it affects your job; you can’t work. A lot of mothers have lost their jobs; and trying to still take care of and nourish their other children and to be able to provide for them,” she said. 

Khalilah Corey remembered when her family lost her brother to gun violence. Her mother unraveled. Corey was just a senior in high school at the time, almost 21 years ago, when her older brother was shot and killed in Chicago. 

“That’s when life changed for me and my family,” she said. “You see it on the news … but it really hit home and from that day is when I kind of started to prepare myself for the worst of anything.” 

She said from that moment she knew she had to be strong for her mom. From then on, her mom experienced mental health struggles, and she and her siblings took on a new role in the family. 

“She was so deep in grief that myself and my sister used to think she didn’t care about us because she was so stuck in grief,” she said. “It didn’t divide us, but I had to be the strong one. I didn’t get a chance to really grieve my brother because I had to be strong for my mom. I had to make sure she was eating, and to make sure she was bathing and make sure that bills are paid.” 

Corey stayed in Chicago for some time, raising her children. But at one point, she no longer felt they were safe. 

“In 2013, I was like ‘OK, the city is getting worse. People are getting robbed left and right. People are getting killed left and right,’” she said. 

So she moved her family to Minnesota in 2014, leaving their family and friends from Chicago behind. And Corey felt at peace, she recalled the relief of watching her kids play outside without her worrying. 

“They had bikes, hoverboards, they could go up and down the street for hours without me worrying,” she said. “It was just like, they can actually be kids now because in Chicago, there was no going outside on the front porch or on the back porch to play. You could not do that because there were too many stray bullets, too many weirdos, too many winos walking past and snatching kids. It’s just a lot of violence. Going back to Minnesota was almost like a safe haven.” 

But that sense of safety was broken in the most horrific way. 

Corey’s family moved to the Webber-Camden neighborhood of north Minneapolis. Her children attended what was formerly known as Patrick Henry High School. On a day in October, one of her sons, Wanya Corey, went to shoot some hoops but never came back. 

Hours after he was supposed to have returned, Khalilah Corey got a call from someone telling her to call the police. She found out around 9 p.m. — several hours after her son had left the house — that gun violence had taken the life of someone close to her again. 

“My heart dropped,” she said. 

Wanya’s mom said he was a loving child, and always helped out people who were struggling. He was trusting and giving — even when they didn’t have much themselves, his mom said. 

“He was just walking down the street, bouncing his basketball on his way to play basketball. No care in the world,” she said. “And then gunned down.” 

Wanya Corey was killed on Oct. 11, 2020, just blocks away from the Minneapolis Police 4th Precinct on Plymouth Avenue. It was a drive-by shooting. 

“I couldn’t stop screaming. I couldn’t stop crying,” Khalilah Corey said. “You don’t know what you will do (in that situation) until something actually happens.” 

The case is still open, although they’ve arrested the driver of the car, who was convicted of second-degree murder and is serving around 30 years in a correctional facility. The shooter, however, has not been caught, she said.  

Related: Gun violence impacting Minnesota youth and young adults at higher rates

An analysis from the Minnesota Reformer found that in 2020 Minneapolis police closed less than half of all gun homicides and fewer than 1 in 5 violent gun assaults in 2020. Low clearance rates coupled with high rates of crime have created a phenomenon referred to as what some call a “crisis of legitimacy” — where people have low levels of confidence in police abilities to solve crimes. 

Evidence suggests that low levels of police legitimacy are linked to higher rates of homicide because victims of violent crime may take retaliatory measures since they don’t rely on or trust the police to solve the crime. Black said sometimes when people are frustrated that there hasn’t been justice yet, people might take things into their own hands, which can further separate a family. 

“A lot of families … their children often will want to go retaliate because the police aren’t moving. (They think) ‘No one cared about my loved ones so I’m gonna go take care of this better for myself’ or (sometimes) the children start drinking, doing drugs, whatever they have to do to try to deal with that level of pain which (is) tearing the family apart,” Black said.  

She recalled a family who knew who the shooter of their child was but the individuals had not been arrested by law enforcement. The mother of the victim was confronted by the shooters of her child at the grocery store, Black said. 

“A lot of the families that can’t afford to move, they’re stuck in the same community with the perpetrator, the shooter, and oftentimes families know who the shooter (is), if it was gang involved … and there’s nothing you can do,” she said. 

Two years after Wanya Corey’s death the family moved to Tennessee. 

“They didn’t get the shooter. He’s still roaming the streets, creating more chaos and more heartache to other families,” Khalilah Corey said. “That’s why I had to get out of Minneapolis because it was a constant reminder. Everywhere I go, it’s a constant reminder. It’s all I can see is this person’s face. It was very hard. I didn’t feel safe for my children to be outside.” 

There’s support

Corey said after the death of her son, she knew she had to be strong for her other kids. But she did see the same pattern her mother experienced 20 years prior. 

Despite being strong, it did take a toll on her health. 

“The main thing that we struggle with as mothers who have lost children is just everyday life. You don’t wake up saying, ‘Oh, I gotta get up, go to work. I gotta cook. I gotta make sure this is done.’ No, you can’t even remember to pay bills, let alone brush your teeth, or feed yourself or anything,” Corey said. “I was indulging in food to try and fill that void. I was angry all the time, I was snappy about every little thing. I would go from happy to sad in seconds. I couldn’t focus at work, I would just burst out in tears.” 

The grief for Corey and Black is compounded. They are cousins. Corey said she remembers when Nia Black was killed. A couple of months after Corey’s son was killed, she learned about Mothers Against Community Gun Violence. 

“I knew I needed to speak with someone who’d been through what I went through or was going through what I went through and continued to go through,” Corey said. 

Someone recommended she call a phone number and join the support group. 

“It was a sense of relief when I went to those support groups because you can just dump everything on the table. Scream, whatever you needed to do to release, and they understood,” Corey said. “Thank God I had a good support system to take care of those things for me, but there’s so many women who don’t and that’s why they become homeless or swallowed with grief.” 

Black said there needs to be more focus on violence prevention and supporting families after the initial crime. She said officials and police often think of the crime as “past tense,” when for families — it’s ongoing. 

She remembered the first walk Mothers Against Community Gun Violence put on, seeing other mothers and family members with signs and pictures of their kids. 

“I was looking around and I was asking people that worked with me ‘Who are these women?’ They said they’re mothers that are hurting, that didn’t get justice for the kids. And they’re walking for me and they’re walking for their kids,” Black said. “I never in a million years thought it would be what it turned out to be, but people were hurting. people needed to be heard and I didn’t even have to go out and seek and recruit people. They were just watching us on the news and they were driving their cars over there and they just came walking for their children.” 

Black and Corey said there’s a deep need for mothers to heal from these traumas because if they don’t it impacts the whole family and the surrounding community. 

“These are hurting people. These are hurting families. I’ve always said that you have to start connecting with the families that are going through this type of trauma because what happens is, how do you expect a community to be well if a family is not well?” Black said. 

Corey said she met nine other women in similar situations through the support group. Those people were a big part of the healing process. 

“LaTanya, she helped a lot, even though she was still so very new to this unwanted club that we’re now a part of … She was still grieving herself, she was still figuring things out, but she knew that she has to do something to keep her child’s name alive. And to make sure that justice came for Nia — and she knew that there (were) so many others that were struggling with the same issues as her,” Corey said.  “I don’t know where I would be right now if I didn’t have the support system I had, because I was very depressed.” 

Advocating for change

Mothers Against Community Gun Violence also hosts a workshop that trains mothers of victims on how to advocate for policy change. The group also worked in the Legislature last session alongside Moms Demand Action, pushing for the public safety omnibus bill that passed last May. 

That legislation includes gun safety measures such as background checks, creating a law to limit firearm access to those in crisis, restricting no-knock search warrants, and the component the group advocated for, which was more funding for community violence intervention. 

“That was one of our proudest moments,” Black said. “We’re just a small nonprofit community group trying to make change. Our group is comprised of mothers who have lost children to gun violence, and to be able to get them to add that language in the bill was a huge win for community overall.” 

Other legislation that passed include the Next Step program, which is a hospital-based intervention program for victims of violence that aims to reduce the risk of violent revictimization and retaliatory cycles.