BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – Trying to pick up the pieces of two family members who were lost last month, The McDowell family and community members filled Longfellow Park with yellow, white and blue balloons to honor the lives of Kevin and Kevinsha.
Nineteen-year old Kevin Dunn was shot on Dayton Street on April 20. Following his death, the family sold plates of food to raise money for his funeral.
That day, the family experienced tragedy yet again when Gerald McDowell, shot and killed his 18-year old sister Kevinsha McDowell.
Sister Janique McDowell was wounded in the attack that killed her sister. She said mental health support is important to the family right now.
“Mental health is real,” she says with tears in her eyes. “I don’t know where we go from here because it’s going to be hard with like our mental, our thoughts, our mind. We have been offered therapy, and we accepted it because we need it.”
Gun violence advocates attended the balloon release and say community support and resources are needed, especially in cases like these.
“We have to engage in order to stop what’s going on. If we don’t intervene and try to figure out how we can bring resources, how we can bring help, how we can bring intervention, how we could bring prevention. And we don’t focus on that aspect of change in our community then a lot of these things are going to continue going on,” said Baton Rouge Community Street Team member Darius Crocket.
Besides advocating against gun violence, Crocket says the Baton Rouge Street Team has been providing the family with resources, support and consistency.
McDowell said the family is still in search of funding for funeral expenses for Kevin and Kevinsha, click here to donate.
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