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Day 6

Day 6 Encore: What it's like to lose 24 friends to gun violence

Earlier this year, Camiella Williams lost her 24th friend to gun violence in Chicago. A former gang member who now teaches at-risk youth. She tells Brent that she's gone to so many funerals that she is becoming numb to the violence in her city.
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Chicago Police detectives investigate the scene where a number of people, including a 3-year-old child, were shot in a city park on the south side of Chicago, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013. Authorities said no one has been taken into custody in connection with the shooting. (Paul Beaty/The Associated Press)
Day 610:53Day 6 Encore: What it's like to lose 24 friends to gun violence

Chicago just broke a grim record.

The month of July saw 65 people being killed in the city, making it the deadliest July that city has seen in a decade. One of the month's last homicide victims was Trinyce Sanders-Wilson, shot and killed by her estranged husband on her way out of a Sunday church service. He then took his own life. 

July's death toll puts the number of homicides that Chicago has seen this year alone at almost 400. In 2015, the total number of homicides for the entire year was 490.

Police push back demonstrators who continue to protest the fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald as they attempt to disrupt holiday shoppers along Chicago's Michigan Avenue in late December. (Joshua Lott/Getty Images)

These numbers do not come as a shock to anti-gun activist Camiella Williams, who has lost at least 24 of her friends to gun violence.

A gun made me feel powerful.- Camiella Williams

Williams has gone to so many funerals that she says she is becoming numb to the violence in her city. But she is not counting on the police for justice.

"I know the police is not going to catch these people," she says.

Demonstrators protest the shooting death of 16-year-old Pierre Loury near the location where he was killed on April 12, 2016 in Chicago. (Getty Images)

A former gang member who got her first gun at age 13, Williams understands the pressures that push people to become violent.

"What I was exposed to in my community — shooting all day, fighting … You begin to say, 'Look, I'm tired of fighting. I'm taking the hits and the blows, so now I've gotta get a gun.' And a gun made me feel powerful."

I have students that tell me: 'Damn, Ms. Williams, I don't care about going to jail. Jail is better for me.'- Camiella Williams

Some of the youth Williams works with get tired of the street life and start looking to prison as a way out. 

"I have students that tell me: 'Damn, Ms. Williams, I don't care about going to jail. Jail is better for me.'"

They see prison as a place where they can belong, and lead better lives. She recalls one student who said that he was ready to go to jail.

When she asked why, he said: "I just need that structure, man. I don't have that structure."

Williams left gang life after she found out she was pregnant. She now lives in the suburbs of Chicago and has a 9-year-old son. These days, she works as a teacher, helping at-risk youth to navigate their neighbourhoods and break the cycle of violence.

It can be discouraging. But she says she won't stop. "If I give up," she says, "what message is that sending to the people I'm trying to help?"

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