MEMPHIS, TN -
MEMPHIS, TN - (WMC-TV) – A community rocked by a double shooting is looking for answers; answers the Memphis mayor thinks he has to curb gun violence.
Students were just getting out of school when two teenagers were shot at a community center near Westwood High School. One of them was a student at Westwood.
"It's pretty shocking that your kids can't go to the community center or come home from school, you know, and get shot," parent Carol Moore said.
Police got the call around 2:30 that there was a gang fight at Westwood High. They showed up and found nothing.
"Sometime after that the dispatcher received information from one of the employees that there had been a shooting at their complex, at the rear of the park," Lt. Colonel Lawrence Jamison said.
A 17-year-old had been shot in the chest and lower back, and a 15-year-old was shot in the stomach.
"It's tragic," said 15-year-old Quandarias Roby. "I pray for them. It could have been me. I pray for them. I pray for both of them."
The 15-year-old went to the MED. The 17-year-old was taken by a private car to a nearby hospital then air lifted to the MED.
Police are not sure exactly why the shooting happened or if it really is gang related. The shooting happened just after school let out. Many students and parents gathered, wondering how something like this could happen in the middle of the day.
"Maybe the mayor will get some control over these guns," Moore said. "I don't know how he's going to do it. It looks pretty out of hand."
Just minutes after the shooting at the community center, Mayor AC Wharton held a previously scheduled news conference to lay out his new initiative to stop the gun violence.
The mayor made it clear the plan is not about gun control but saving lives.
"That's what comes to me every time I hear a shooting: not what's going on in Washington but what can we do in the streets of Memphis Tennessee right now," Wharton said.
Police currently have no suspects in Friday's shooting. Investigators do have the name of a person of interest they want to talk with. Both of the teenaged victims are in critical condition.
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