"It's scary," said Helen Lynch, who, with her husband Jose Rodriguez, was selling clothes and sneakers from a small sidewalk tent near where the marchers ended up at William and South William streets. Newburgh Free Academy, the Newburgh high school, closed its campuses on Thursday and Friday, out of what the district called an abundance of caution. "It is a problem in other municipalities in the Hudson Valley, the state of New York and across the nation." "The increase in gun violence is not a city of Newburgh problem alone," Harvey said. Harvey said they are already present in the city, but now they will be more visible. The city will launch a special task force of federal, state, county and local law enforcement and other agencies, including the FBI, to look at solutions to the gun violence in Newburgh. Later, city officials held a press conference, where Mayor Torrance Harvey declared a "call to action for all stakeholders," including residents, officials and agencies, to do whatever is necessary to "reach our troubled youth." Several dozen took part in the peace walk held by community organization SNUG - "guns" spelled backward - which ended in the area of the shooting incident. Gangs: A special Hudson Valley investigation Newburgh: City fights cycle of gang violence Shootings: Newburgh to create gun violence task force after teens shot She does not know exactly what that strategy might require, but she said of Friday's peace walk in Newburgh was "a good start." Law enforcement, families and schools "have to come together to develop a strategy," Vega-LeBron said. The incident came two days after a shooting outside Poughkeepsie High School in which nobody was injured but a 13-year-old found with a handgun was arrested. A fourth male teenage gunshot victim also turned up around the same time at a hospital. On Wednesday, three boys between the ages of 16 and 18 were shot in Newburgh around 3:30 p.m. In each city, there are theories for solutions, but few have yet cracked the code. CITY OF NEWBURGH - Solving the issue of gun violence in Hudson Valley cities is "a complex, multi-layered problem," Elizabeth Vega-Lebron said.Ĭities across the region have seen the problem worsen in recent years, with the violence increasingly centered on young generations.
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