RICHMOND COUNTY, Ga. (WJBF) – April 30th, 2024.
A shooting at Augusta’s Cedarwood Apartments leaves fourteen year old Anthony Harrison dead.
His accused killer: Darryaun Tanksley, age 15.
District Attorney Jared Williams said, “I remember very much going to that young man’s funeral and being so frustrated that we focus our resources on the response to these crimes. Why don’t we do more to stop it from ever happening in the first place?”
The problem of youth violence isn’t new.
Here’s Rev. Dr Larry Fryer speaking at the Georgia legislature in 2014.
“Our children are fighting each other, they’re fighting us, they are dying at our feet.”
Mary Morrison asked, “Do you think anything has changed in eleven years?”
Dr. Fryer said, “No matter of fact it has worsened since the time I did this speech in the capitol in Atlanta”
In Richmond County from 2021 until now, 17 homicides were committed by youth 17 and under.
Add in assault, rape, robbery and other lesser crimes for a total of more than 68 hundred cases.
Dr. Fryer said, “They are dying in the home, in the schools, issues in the church especially in the community where they go each and every day.”
Mary Morrison said, “Dr.Fryer, frustrated by the senseless violence plaguing our youth reached out to me at NewsChannel 6 and asked if I’d be willing to host a Youth Violence Summit.
We invited a dozen people and 12 people came.”
The mayor, the District Attorney, and juvenile court judge were there.
Along with representatives from Law Enforcement, local non-profits, educators and clergy.
Each brought to the table a different perspective on juvenile crime, its causes and possible solutions and all agreed it starts in the home.
Dr. Fryer said, “Parents I think first, then its going to take our government to support these parents, its going to take the school system its going to take our churches, but it must begin in the home and then it spreads abroad.”
Judge Willie Saunders presides over juvenile court in Augusta.
“Part of the reason it is juvenile court is that we understand that children are children and children make mistakes.”
Saunders points out that brains don’t fully mature until about age 25.
“A lot of things are done on impulses. A lot of violent offenses occur on impulse”
And the consequences can be life altering.
“The road can be hard. It can be hard reestablishing yourself after you’ve been convicted of an armed robbery even though it may have been at age 14.”
Easy access to guns makes the problem worse. Sheriff Gino Brantley says some kids just walk by cars and pull on the handle in search of weapons.
“We don’t keep safe those weapons as we should. We don’t lock them in our cars. We don’t take them in the house”
District Attorney, Jared Williams, recalls a case he prosecuted in Athens, Georgia.
Williams says two groups of kids were at odds, saw on social media that one group was in downtown Athens.
The DA says Pharoah Williams, shot into the crowd. Seven people were hurt. None seriously but the severity of the crime meant someone had to be punished.
District Attorney Jared Williams said, “What those kids didn’t know at that moment was what they were trying to do was gain respect and what they did instead was gain 140 years of prison exposure, twenty years for every one of those shots.”
Williams, who pleaded guilty was sentenced to 20 years in prison followed by 20 years probation.
The cost of youth violence in Georgia alone is enormous.
According to the CDC, it soared to 122 billion dollars in 2020.
Mary Morrison said, “Some communities are now looking to spend more money on prevention.
Next time on “Saving Our Children”, you’ll meet an Arkansas Judge whose town came together to combat youth violence. The results are amazing.
Video shot, edited by: Photojournalist Dania Alawir
