MAD DADS is speaking out with a warning after a woman was shot Sunday while attending a vigil for 16-year-old Adrian McKinzie, who was killed in a triple shooting last Wednesday in Northwest Jacksonville.
McKinzie and two others were shot on Effee Street in the Moncrief Park neighborhood, which was also where the vigil was being held. People attending the vigil noticed a suspicious white car circling the block then shots were fired. One woman was struck in the arm with non-life-threatening injuries.
While vigils for gunshot victims are common in Jacksonville, AJ Jordan of the Jacksonville MAD DADS organization said it’s uncommon for a vigil to become a crime scene.
“In my 18 years of serving my community, that has never happened. The shooter was very bold and was sending a message to that family and other people at the vigil last night,” Jordan said.
The motive for the shooting that killed McKinzie is unclear, but social media has been a buzz with speculation about his death.
“Social media definitely plays a huge role, especially among our young adults and teenagers. They do a lot of beefing and talking on social media and then once it reaches a certain level, they act on it,” Jordan said.
Jordan said the fact that Sunday’s drive-by shooting injured someone attending the vigil, just days after McKinzie was one of three people shot days prior means the likelihood of a retaliatory shooting is very high.
“We don’t know when. It could be a week from now. It could be two weeks. It could be a year from now. We just don’t know,” Jordan said. “That’s why we send the message that we’re taking our community back from the criminal.”
Jordan said many of the young people involved in these shootings have never been exposed to anything other than the environment they live in. He also said something as simple as exposing people to positive environments when they are young could go a long way.