A rash of shootings in Burlington has compelled one member of Burlington’s city council to publicly declare that the city’s municipal leaders will take concerted action to deal with juvenile crime.
Councilmember Dejuana Bigelow made this public pronouncement on Monday in response to a recent spurt of gun violence that included a gunshot fatality in the small hours of the morning on Sunday. Bigelow went on to blame much of this mayhem on underage perpetrators.
“We are all concerned,” she went on to add during a city council work session, “because these are juveniles that are out at, like, two or three in the morning. . . and we will be in conversation about what is occurring.”
The incidents that set off Bigelow’s sense of alarm appear to have begun on the morning of September 26 when the city’s police department received a report of a shooting along the 1400 block of North Church Street. According to the police department, officers found three wounded juveniles at the scene and had them transported to an area hospital with non-life-threatening gunshot injuries.
At about 2:00 a.m. on the following day, the department received another report about gun violence along the 900 block of Kirpatrick Road. In this case, officers found a single adult victim, who was later reported to be in stable condition at an area hospital.
The most recent case of gun violence in Burlington occurred at about 2:00 a.m. on Sunday along the 1300 block of Elm Street. According to the police department, two juveniles received gunshot wounds in this particular attack, while an adult victim was already dead when officers arrived at the scene. The two juveniles were last reported to be in stable and critical condition at area hospitals.
