LOUISVILLE, Ky. — One month after surviving a shooting in Ballard Park, 19-year-old Victoria Gwynn said she is stepping up to stop the city's rising gun violence.
Gwynn and her friend, 17-year-old DaJuan Coward, were shot at the park in early June. While she is still healing from the shot to her leg, she said the bigger wound was losing Coward. After being put on life support following the shooting, Coward died days later.
"I'm not dead, I'm still walking and breathing, but on the inside, it hurts,” Gwynn said. "He found me, and I told him I couldn't get up and that's when he told me he got shot in the head and to call the police."
The shooting happened less than two years after she lost her brother, Christian, to gun violence at the same age. At just 19, Christian Gwynn was shot and killed near 43rd and Market. Police have charged Jameko Lee Hayden with murder.
"Losing him just put a hole in my heart for a second time,” Gwynn said.
Now, she’s following in her parents Krista and Nevada Gwynn's footsteps of activism.
"If I can touch families, mothers and fathers, as we've been doing for the last year and a half, I'm pretty sure my kids can touch their age group,” her mother Krista Gwynn said.
Victoria Gwynn is stepping into community activist Christopher 2X's new Future Healers program. The partnership with UofL Health supports kids impacted by the trauma of gun violence in their communities.
"Every one of those numbers is an individual. And every one of those individuals it attached to a family,” said Dr. Keith Miller with UofL Hospital.
2X said there will be about 24 kids involved through a hospital ambassadorship, and another group through the YMCA. Future Healers' leaders and medical students are meant to provide an influence, example and resource for help.
"It has to stop," Gwynn said. "I don't want my little sister to be scared to go outside and play with her friends."
Gwynn said she has long hours of therapy ahead that she knows cannot heal every wound. Instead, she hopes instead to stop new ones, keeping kids like her own little sister from getting caught in the crossfire.
"I want to be her support system, I want to be kids support system," Gwynn said.
LMPD is still investigating DaJuan Coward's death at Ballard Park. As of Friday, police said they had no new information.
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