Rochester Mayor Malik Evans Addresses COVID-19 and Violence

In Mayor Malik Evans’s first few days of serving as the city’s mayor, Evans started his first full day in the office dealing with the deaths of two of his city’s youngest citizens; Derrick Watson and Julius Greer Jr. On Friday, Watson, age 17, died of COVID-19, and just two days later, Greer, age 14, was shot and killed in a store on the city’s northeast side. Both attended Leadership Academy for Young Men.

Mayor Evans addressed the Rochester people, calling these losses a result of a ‘double pandemic:’ “Let me be clear. A 14-year-old child was shot and killed – not at night – but during the day at North Street and he did not show up to school this morning. He could have been a doctor. He could have been a lawyer. He could have been an astronaut. But that young man is now gone from us forever. And on my first day of mayor, I had the awesome task of picking up the phone and calling his mom and dad to offer my condolences…This is heartbreaking. Leadership Academy, my heart goes out to that school…We’re dealing with a double pandemic in our community right now – violence and COVID – and we saw both of them happen at the same time within a small number of days. School should not be placed to deal with the death of a friend but that is our reality and we can not run from it.”

Source: 13 WHAM