Vigil Memorializes Gun Violence Victims

With lighted candles and heavy hearts, family and friends of victims of gun violence held a vigil in Granada Hills on Sunday to remember not only those who died but also those still grieving over the loss of their loved ones.

The group of about 40--including Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and family members of the survivors of the North Valley Jewish Community Center shooting in August 1999--gathered at the Granada Hills center to observe National Victims Memorial Week.

“Gun violence not only takes lives but also affects others. The [number of] victims of gun violence is much, much larger than those killed,” said Virginia Classick, president of the San Fernando Valley Chapter of the Million Mom March and one of vigil’s organizers. Because families of victims suffer, they are also victims, Classick said.

One by one, adults and children approached the podium, spoke the name of a person killed by a gun and rang a bell.

A list of victims written on a scroll included Lori Gonzalez, Parks’ 20-year-old granddaughter, who was shot to death in South Los Angeles in May, and Kevin Leung, the teenager who killed himself Dec. 1 before horrified classmates in front of Granada Hills High School.

Mindy Finkelstein, 17, who, police said, was shot in the leg by white supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr. during the Jewish Center rampage, lit a candle and invoked the name of Gabe Williams, a 17-year-old friend whom she said killed himself last year.

Pat O’Keefe, of Palmdale, lit a candle for her 18-year-old daughter Michelle, who was murdered in February. Michelle’s killer is still at large, O’Keefe said.

“Think about the issue of access to weapons,” said Parks, invoking incidents such as the Jewish Community Center shooting and the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. “High-volume, high-powered assault weapons have no real place in our domestic society.”

The vast majority of violent crimes in Los Angeles involved guns, Parks said. Gun violence disproportionately affects young people, most of them males, he added.

Attending the ceremony with his wife Bobbie, Parks said the gathering was especially meaningful for his family because of the death of their granddaughter Lori, killed one week shy of her 21st birthday.

“It’s a loss you’ll never recover from,” Parks said.

Surveying the lighted candles and the moist eyes all around the room, Bobbie Parks added: “There’s a strength . . . when you realize that there are lots of other people suffering.”

Organizers of the vigil decried the level of gun violence across the nation and called slayings “preventable deaths.”