A Stand Against Bloodshed

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 their loved ones.

The group of about 40--including Chief Bernard C. Parks of the Los Angeles Police Department 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 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 the vigil’s organizers. Because families of victims also suffer, they are also victims, Classick said.

One by one, adults and children approached the podium, spoke aloud 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 a white supremacist during the Jewish Center rampage, lit a candle and recited the name of Gabe Williams, a 17-year-old friend who 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,” Parks said.

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

Parks, who attended the ceremony with his wife, Bobbie, said the gathering was especially meaningful for his family because of the death of their granddaughter, Lori, who was 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 the slayings “preventable deaths.”

“If there were any illness that killed 10 children a day in our country, we would marshal all of our resources as a nation to find solutions,” Classick said. “Yet every day, 10 children and many more adults . . . are killed by gun violence.”

Loren Lieb, mother of Joshua Stepakoff, the 7-year-old boy who was shot in the leg during last year’s attack on the Jewish community center, said: “We have the power to make change.”

“I hope we will be looking forward to a time when there will be fewer [acts of gun violence] that bring us here,” Lieb said.