Shoes Used to Take a Stand Against Gun Violence

The shoes of more than 500 murder victims were lined up along the steps of a county building Wednesday, a grim reminder of the toll gun violence takes on Los Angeles residents every year.

The shoes, donated by relatives and friends of the victims, will be loaded onto a truck bound for Washington.

Along with about 40,000 other pairs from murder victims across the country, they will be displayed in Washington on Sept. 30 to draw attention to the staggering number of people killed by guns each year in the United States.

The project is an idea borrowed from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, which has a display of about 4,000 shoes that belonged to victims of the Maidanek concentration camp. The local shoe collection project was coordinated by the Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater Los Angeles.

Each pair of shoes contains a note describing how gun violence has affected the relatives and friends of the victims.

Violence is the leading cause of death in the county for people under 35, and the majority of victims were killed by firearms, according to the coalition. During the past decade, more than 18,000 people in the county have been killed by gunfire.

The display coincided with a unanimous decision Wednesday by the Los Angeles City Council to ban the manufacture and sale of guns known as Saturday night specials.

After the shoes were placed in front of the county Department of Health Services administration building in downtown Los Angeles, Donnie Jenkins of Inglewood, whose son was murdered, said, “I made a vow that I would not stop. I would try to help in any way that I can to stop the violence. Something must be done.”

In 1995, there were 1,785 homicides in Los Angeles County, a record 807 of them gang-related.

“We have kids who are dying, who are totally innocent, killed as bystanders, for no other reason than they are in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said coalition Chairman Michael Genelin. “And the only reason they are killed is that there are tons of these guns going out to the open market.”

Times wire services contributed to this story.