Tallahassee violence is real

I’ll admit I know nothing – as a young staff member pointed out yesterday – about the night life on the streets of Tallahassee.

But I do know this: Curtis Brown, 26, died in the parking lot of McDonald's/Circle K at 811 Lake Bradford Road Sunday morning.

And now his mother, Mary Brown, and other family members and friends are grieving for the man Leon County Sheriff’s Office deputies called “an innocent bystander.”

I know all of that and this, too:

Nothing good can come of 150 people, ages 15 to 34 – at least some of whom are apparently coming from an “after-hours club” and some of whom are carrying guns – congregating in a parking lot at 4:30 in the morning.

And nothing did.

I’ve seen the pictures of what came from it. They are on Tallahassee.com.

Controversial? You bet. We’ve gotten several phone calls calling us insensitive and uncaring. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Too many people are being shot in our community, and too many people’s lives end in text-only reporting. There is too much grieving that we never see. It is time to humanize the violence, to tell it in full color.

Headline: TPD arrests 19-year-old in shooting.

Headline: LCSO: Handyman fought intruder.

Headline: Madison Co. sheriff seeks two in homicide (of Leon County woman).

Headline: Woodville woman's death now considered a homicide.

Headline: Three charged in Holton St. killing.

Those are just some of the headlines that have appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat in less than three months since the beginning of the year. These are real stories, not make believe on TV. All of them should make you cry.

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