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‘It’s Got to Stop’: Atlanta’s Mayor Decries a Surge of Violence as a Girl Is Killed

Secoriea Turner, 8, was one of several children killed across the country over the holiday weekend. Her death has roiled Atlanta.

Atlanta police officers standing watch as a burned-out Wendy’s restaurant is cleared of protesters and their belongings on Monday.Credit...Erik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock

ATLANTA — Activists with Black Lives Matter had a vision for what the scorched remains of a Wendy’s restaurant could become: the Rayshard Brooks Peace Center, a gathering place in Atlanta with job training, counseling and youth programs that would be a living memorial named for the man whose fatal encounter with the police transformed the fast-food eatery into the heart of the city’s turmoil.

But the lofty aspirations have been clouded by continuing violence. On Saturday, an 8-year-old girl, Secoriea Turner, was gunned down, the authorities said, after an armed group stopped her family’s car nearby.

“You killed your own — you killed your own this time,” her father, Secoriya Williamson, said at a news conference on Sunday night. “You killed a child. She didn’t do nothing to nobody.”

The killing unsettled a city already beleaguered and on edge. Atlanta has been rocked by weeks of turbulence, with Mr. Brooks’s death on June 12 sparking unrest in the streets, and some in the Police Department staging their own protests after two officers were charged in connection with his death.

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An undated handout photo made available by the Atlanta Police Department shows Secoriea Turner, 8, who was fatally shot on Saturday.Credit...via EPA, via Shutterstock

“Enough is enough” was splashed in all capital letters across the front page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday, repeating the frustrated words of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms at a news conference on Sunday and echoing a sentiment shared in other parts of the country as a number of children have died in recent days in a surge of gun violence.

“The reality is this: These aren’t police officers shooting people on the streets of Atlanta, these are members of the community shooting each other,” Ms. Bottoms said in her news conference.

The enduring struggle with gun violence has also intensified in other cities, including Chicago and Philadelphia, where at least five people were killed within a span of five hours on Sunday, including a 6-year-old boy. Two others in that city were killed over the holiday weekend, with at least 30 people reported shot, officials said.

Philadelphia has recorded nearly 30 percent more homicides this year compared with 2019, officials said, and the year is on track to be the worst since 2007, when the city was besieged by an epidemic of gun violence.

“The deadly Covid-19 pandemic, the unrest triggered by George Floyd’s murder, escalating poverty, broiling summer heat and a flood of illegal guns have created a toxic mix of despair in our city, and we must address it,” Darrell L. Clarke, the City Council president, said in a statement on Monday.

In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency on Monday, saying that weeks of heightened crime and unrest had incited a sense of lawlessness in the capital. He has mobilized as many as 1,000 Georgia National Guard troops and called for state law enforcement agencies to ramp up their patrols in Atlanta.

“Peaceful protests were hijacked by criminals with a dangerous, destructive agenda. Now, innocent Georgians are being targeted, shot, and left for dead,” Mr. Kemp, a Republican, said in a statement, adding; “Enough with the tough talk. We must protect the lives and livelihoods of all Georgians.”

At least four other children were killed across the country over the holiday weekend. On Saturday, an 11-year-old boy, Davon McNeal, died in Washington, D.C., after he was shot in the head when a group of men started firing in the street near a Fourth of July cookout, the authorities said. A 4-year-old boy in St. Louis County, Mo., also died from a gunshot wound to the head on Saturday; the authorities there said he might have been hit by a stray bullet.

Royta Giles Jr., 8, was killed on Friday in a shooting at a mall in Hoover, Ala., outside of Birmingham, the police said. The school district in Bessemer, Ala., said that Royta was a rising third grader, and, in a statement, described him as “a smart child, who was a jewel, with big dreams of someday entering the music industry.”

In Chicago, Natalia Wallace, 7, was fatally shot as she played outside her grandmother’s house, the authorities said. She was among the nine children who had been killed since June 20 as the city’s problems with gun violence flared in recent weeks, with activists and officials describing a tide of anger and despair washing over Chicago.

“Think about the number of children that have been killed just in the last two weeks,” Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s mayor, said before the holiday weekend. “Families that will not recover from this hardship. Mothers’ hearts that are broken, fathers’ hearts that are destroyed, grandparents who are living in mourning.”

The authorities in Atlanta said that Secoriea had been in a car with her mother and her friend when they tried to enter a parking lot near the Wendy’s. A group blocked the entrance to the parking lot, and at least one person in the crowd started shooting at the car, the police said.

The city announced a $10,000 reward, as her family pleaded for anyone who could identify the shooters to come forward.

“We didn’t mean no harm,” her mother, Charmaine Turner, said in the news conference on Sunday, crumpled in a chair, her eyes hollowed by grief. “My baby didn’t mean no harm. Somebody knows something.”

Another shooting broke out nearby later on Sunday, the police said, killing one person.

The restaurant was burned down in the protests touched off by Mr. Brooks’s death. Some activists had started sketching out plans to turn the site into a community center for youth programs, legal aid, entrepreneurship classes and parental counseling.

In a videotaped statement, organizers condemned the shooting and said their activists had no involvement in it. “We stand with you and are here for you,” the organizers said, offering their support to Secoriea’s family.

They added that the violence only underscored the value of the kind of center they envisioned. “It only affirms the urgent need,” they said, “for healing and peace in this community as we continue to be targets of trauma and violence.”

But the violence prompted city officials to close off the parking lot, which had drawn protesters for weeks after Mr. Brooks was killed. On Monday, city workers cleared out the posters, candles and stuffed animals that had been left behind.

The violence has put Ms. Bottoms in what has become a familiar position: standing before cameras, addressing her city in deeply personal terms as long-simmering tensions boil over.

As protests turned violent after the death of George Floyd in the custody of the Minneapolis police, she went on television to urge calm after demonstrators vandalized downtown buildings and set a police vehicle ablaze. The powerful moment, which was broadcast repeatedly on local television and radio stations, elevated her profile across the country, so much so that she was named as a possible running mate for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

She appeared again after Mr. Brooks’s death, announcing that the police chief, Erika Shields, had resigned and that the officer who shot Mr. Brooks, Garrett Rolfe, had been fired.

And on Sunday night, she held another news conference, this time with Secoriea’s parents beside her, decrying the violence that has escalated in recent weeks. The Journal-Constitution reported on Monday that 93 people had been shot between May 31 and June 27, compared with 46 during the same period last year. Fourteen people were killed, which was more than twice the number of homicides during that period in 2019.

“An 8-year-old baby!” the mayor said.

“If you want people to take us seriously and you don’t want us to lose this movement, then we can’t lose each other in this,” Ms. Bottoms added, her exhaustion evident in her face and her voice freighted with emotion. “It’s got to stop. It has to stop.”

Rick Rojas is a national correspondent covering the American South. He has been a staff reporter for The Times since 2014. More about Rick Rojas

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: Atlanta Mayor Deplores Violence: ‘It Has to Stop’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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