UNDER FIRE: Residents describe life in Toledo's most dangerous neighborhoods

Sep. 19—First of three parts

When Quentin Carrington talks about what kind of future he wants for his seven children after losing his younger brother and countless friends to gun violence in Toledo, he doesn't speak of college degrees, successful careers, or sizable bank accounts.

His wish for them is much more fundamental.

"I just want them to live, honestly," he said. "That's the main thing. I just want them to live and make it to be my age."

A police officer walks cross the road at the scene of a shooting at Prospect and Waite avenues April 27, 2020, in Toledo.

Kaitlin Durbin

High-shooting areas don't necessarily correlate with homicides

He's 36.

The most basic of parent prayers — that their children will outlive them — has become an uncertainty for some residents living in low-income neighborhoods in central and North Toledo, where gun violence is most concentrated.

Of 61 homicides in 2020, a record, 18 victims didn't make it to their 20th birthday. Seventy percent of them didn't reach Carrington's arbitrary goal of 36, including his younger brother, Christopher Carrington, who was shot and killed at 34.

This year's homicides — 51 so far — are on pace to match, if not surpass, those figures.

Our series:

Part 1: Dying young — Staying alive amid rising gun violence is an uncertainty for some residents, especially Black youth, in low-income neighborhoods in central and North Toledo.

High-shooting areas don't necessarily correlate with homicides

Part 2: 'The PTSD of poverty' — Poverty and decades of disinvestment keep residents through a cycle of violence they don't feel they can escape.

'Until everyone had enough': Residents describe the role of 'Street Justice' in area's gun violence

Part 3: Solutions — Officials have proposed numerous solutions to end violence. What's working, and what more is left to do?

'We just shoot': Expert describes fear, uncertainty, retaliation that traps youth in a cycle of gun violence, drives them to shoot

There's another three months left in the year.

"I be scared every day," Carrington said, clinging to his 1-year-old son Rio Christopher, named after the uncle he never got to meet.

The escalating violence has left residents of the poorest, most dangerous parts of town feeling trapped and hopeless that the cycle of loss will ever end.

They live in a different Toledo than the one advertised along the outskirts of the city, where signs promise "You will do better," and billboards entice viewers to buy expensive cars, spend their money at area attractions, or indulge in other luxuries.

Around Carrington's neighborhood, and others most under attack, the billboards have been turned into memorials to the people loved and lost there. They serve as a constant reminder of the reality those Toledo residents know: You could die young here.

At Bancroft Street and North Detroit Avenue, the casualties follow one after another:

Image DescriptionQuentin "Ski-lo" Carrington, holds his son Rio Carrington, 1, and points at the billboard on N Detroit Ave and Bancroft St. honoring his brother Christopher Carrington, who was murdered in 2020.THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT

Christopher "Big Wax" Carrington, 34, killed at an after hours club March 15, 2020.

Image DescriptionFamily of James "JayJay" Smith Jr. release balloons in front of a billboard honoring JayJay on the one year anniversary of his death in Toledo on Thursday June 24, 2021.THE BLADE/REBECCA BENSON

James "JayJay" Smith, Jr., 19, killed on June 24, 2020, two days after his father.

Image DescriptionGlenn Scurles, Sr., on April 7, 2021, stands in front of a memorial billboard honoring what would have been his son Glenn Scurles, Jr.'s, 20th birthday. The younger Scurles was shot and killed in Toledo July 14, 2019.THE BLADE/LORI KING

Glenn "Geezy" Scurles, Jr., 18, killed in a drive-by shooting targeting someone else on July 14, 2019.

Despite the different paths they took to survive the crime, poverty, gang violence, and constant threat of death in their neighborhoods, they each met the same end.

"You can't run from it," Carrington said. "If I had the means to relocate out of Toledo, I would."

'Crimes of vicinity'

Not all of Toledo is equally under attack.

Where a person lives in Toledo determines their probability of being disproportionately impacted by gun violence, a Blade analysis of 2020 shooting data showed.

Made with Flourish

There were 207 shooting incidents last year in Census Tract 10, in the area of Lagrange Street and East Central Avenue. Police characterize an incident as any call where gunfire is reported to have occurred or where evidence or victims prove it has, including fatalities, injuries, property damage, animal cruelty, or even casings found and collected.

Directly to the south of that neighborhood, Census tracts 18 and 29 followed closely behind with 169 and 144 shooting incidents, respectively.

While few of those shootings resulted in injury, they represent the unrelenting risk residents there say they face when stepping outside their front door.

In central Toledo, where the top 10 Census tracts with the highest volume of shooting incidents are clustered, the probability of residents encountering a shooting is as high as 1 in 12.

Comparatively, the probability for residents living in tracts along the outskirts of the city is as low as 1 in 3,362. Nine tracts did not report any shootings in 2020; Ottawa Hill's numbers are tracked separately and were not included.

The concentration of gunfire disproportionately impacts communities of color.

According to Census data, 28 percent of Toledo's population is Black or African American, yet 80 percent of homicide victims in 2020 were Black. At least 70 percent of this year's victims are.

The trend isn't unique to Toledo.

Black men and boys ages 15 to 34 make up just 2 percent of the nation's population, yet they were victims in more than a third — 37 percent — of all 2019 gun homicides, the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence and Coalition to Stop Gun Violence found in its analysis, "A Public Health Crisis Decades in the Making."

Firearms, that year, were the leading cause of death for all Americans ages 1 to 24. But the gun homicide rate for Black men and boys was more than 20 times higher than their white counterparts.

One race isn't targeted more than others, Toledo Council member Vanice Williams, who is Black, stressed. It has more to do with where Black residents tend to live — in low-income housing in poorer neighborhoods with higher crime rates.

In nearly all of the Census tracts with the highest poverty and shooting rates, 50-80 percent of the population is Black or African American, putting them at greater risk.

"Don't try to stigmatize one race and say they're trying to kill each other. They're killing who is by them," Ms. Williams, who represents District 4, where the majority of gunfire is concentrated, said. "They're crimes of vicinity."

Residents agree.

Living in neighborhoods where gunfire is most prevalent doesn't just physically put them in the potential line of fire, they say. It encapsulates them in a culture of violence they can't seem to escape, whether they're contributing to it or not. (The Blade will explore the root causes of the violence in part 2 of the series).

"When you from over here, you know sh-t happens," Geezy's older sister, Jasmine Tucker, 34, said. "In these neighborhoods you see killings every day, you see drugs being sold in front of your kids, you see gangbanging, you see drive-bys, you see overdoses. When you go out to Perrysburg or go out to Ottawa Hills you don't see that."

In some ways, residents have become resigned to the violence, she said. Even walking around the neighborhoods where her family grew up and where they are welcomed, she warned her sisters and their children to be on alert.

"You can be standin' over here right now, just like we standin' outside, and they can come up and do a drive-by while we right here," she said. "That's the type of neighborhood this is."

'The right place at the wrong time'

Image DescriptionChristopher "Big Wax" Carrignton, 34, killed at an after hours club on March 15, 2020.House of Day Funeral Home

Big Wax's risk of dying young was high to begin with.

According to his brother, Big Wax was a member of the 900 gang, a subgroup of the Folk-based gang tied to Vance Street, where he grew up. Carrington, who also goes by Ski-lo, has the number tattooed across the fingers of his right hand.

Image DescriptionQuentin "Ski-lo" Carrington, pictured April 22, 2021, with 900 tattooed on the knuckles of his right hand, representing the 900 gang, a subgroup of the Folk-based Southside Gangster Disciples. The gang is tied to the 900 block of Vance Street, where the Carringtons grew up. THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT

Wax served time for drug trafficking and illegally carrying a firearm, charges stemming from "running the streets," a term his brother said means doing what he needed to to survive — stealing, fighting, selling cocaine. It often put him in harm's way: he'd previously been shot in the arm and leg, and suffered a graze wound to the side of his head.

Carrington wouldn't say whether his brother had ever pulled a trigger against someone else, and denied doing so himself (he has record of criminal damaging, a low-level felony, and several misdemeanors for disorderly conduct, but nothing past 2012, until he was cited this summer for having unlicensed pit bulls). But he worried that, eventually, his brother's luck might run out.

In March 2020, it did, but not the way his brother feared.

The younger Carrington was out drinking with friends in the parking lot of an after-hours club at the former Lyric's Lounge when 15-year-old Tacarie Cunningham fired into the crowd. The teen was aiming for a man who was suspected, but not charged, in the 2017 shooting death of his older brother.

"Every time they see each other they be shooting at each other," Carrington said of the feud.

He calls Wax's death an accident, but said it had always been a likely possibility based on how he was living and the areas he spent time in.

"He was just out like that," Carrington said. "He wasn't doing nothing against nobody, but when you out too much it could happen. It can always happen."

Image DescriptionJames "JayJay" Smith, Jr., 19, killed outside of the Moody Manor Apartments on June 24, 2020.House of Day Funeral Home

At a balloon release honoring the one-year anniversary of his death, JayJay's family described him as fiercely loyal to his five younger siblings. He did whatever he could to help support them, which they said sometimes included selling drugs while he worked toward getting a legal job as an electrician.

In one of the pictures on his memorial billboard, he's seen in a cap and gown, holding his diploma from Penn Foster High School, an online school based out of Pennsylvania. He thought it was his ticket to a better life.

Sgt. Mel Stachura with Toledo police's gang task force said JayJay was not a known gang member, but because he grew up in traditional Crips territory and has relatives in the gang, he was often mistaken as one.

The association may have killed him. One side of town doesn't like the other, his relatives said.

He was shot nine times as he was leaving his late father's Moody Manor apartment, a low-income housing complex claimed by the Manor Boys, a Bloods-based gang and rival of the Crips. He'd been there making funeral arrangements after his father died two days earlier in an unrelated shootout with another man, who also died.

JayJay's family didn't recognize his alleged shooter, who they believe to be a teenager who has not been named a suspect. They assume — as do police — that he was killed for stepping on a rival gang's territory.

Police believe his protection at the complex ended when his father died, effectively proving what JayJay's family says they've known all along: "You ain't even gotta be in a gang. They still target you."

Image DescriptionGlenn "Geezy" Scurles, Jr., 18, killed in a drive-by shooting on July 14, 2019.House of Day Funeral Home

When it comes to the youngest of the three billboard victims, Sergeant Stachura was clear about one thing: "Glenn Scurles had absolutely nothing to do with gangs."

Instead, Scott High School's starting running back preferred to spend his free time at home playing video games or painting houses to save money for various business ideas he hoped would one day move his mother and six sisters out of "the hood," a network of neighborhoods in central and North Toledo where his family says poverty, drug use, gang violence, and shootings have become an expected part of life.

He tried to keep his friends away from the lifestyle too, especially after three teens died in shootings the first seven months of 2019, and another seven were named as suspects. It's a trend of youth violence that has continued into 2020 and 2021.

"He used to always say, what if I get shot, and I'd always tell him you won't get shot cause you ain't in no gang," his sister, Ms. Tucker recalled. "But he did get shot."

A single bullet tore through Geezy's upper abdomen, damaging his stomach, heart, and lung, while he was waiting for dinner on the porch of his aunt's home off Woodrow Boulevard. His cousin, a 28-year-old Geer Gang Crips member who'd recently been released from jail on burglary charges, had made a surprise visit and was outside when members of the Cherry Wood Crips unleashed a spray of bullets as part of an ongoing feud.

Only Geezy was hit that day. He bled out within minutes.

"They always said people would be killed at the wrong place at the wrong time and I never understood that," his oldest sister, Nadja Broadnax, 37, said. "Like with my brother, he was at the right place at the wrong time. It could be the right place."

When the right place falls in the wrong part of town, anything can happen.

"It's the area that you in," Ms. Tucker said, matter-of-factly.

"It can be the gas station on Detroit and Central and they can do a drive-by. That 75-year-old man just got shot up there," she said, referring to innocent bystander John Toyer, Jr., 74, who was shot and killed in a spray of gunfire while sitting in his vehicle in the parking lot at the Mobil gas station in March.

The accused 15-year-old shooter was reportedly firing at officers conducting a traffic stop there, but inadvertently hit Mr. Toyer.

Toledo police couldn't put an exact number on how many more of the city's homicides were unintended victims, but they said the count is increasing in tandem with shootings.

Where children play

Like in Carrington's case, area parents say they feel helpless and hopeless, not only about how to keep themselves safe amid the flying bullets, but how to protect their children.

A study shared by the American Psychological Association found that adolescents in violent urban neighborhoods increasingly perceive they will die before age 35. In Toledo, some residents say they celebrate if they make it to 21.

"I never thought bringing them up in this world it would be like this," JayJay's aunt, Antoinette Smith, 35, said. "They can't ride their bikes, they can't take a walk. Nothing."

As she spoke, loud cracks of fireworks exploded in the distance as part of early Fourth of July celebrations. With each one, family members would flinch and pause to listen, assessing the threat.

"See how scary it is," a nearby cousin remarked. "We hear that boom and we jump."

In a particularly dangerous summer, the victims keep coming.

Eleven people, aged 17 to 50, were killed in July. Another six died in August, including an 11-year-old white boy who was shot outside his home, east of Lagrange Street, while playing basketball with his 14-year-old brother, who was seriously injured. Three Black men, ages 20, 21, and 26, have been killed so far in September, two in central Toledo, one in south.

"I don't see it getting no better," Carrington said.

For now, his 1-year-old son may be safe in his arms, but he wonders if it's too late for his older children, who he says are already navigating the minefields of their neighborhoods that threaten their survival.

His oldest son is in jail on a three-year sentence related to a car-jacking that turned into a police chase. His middle child accidentally shot a friend in the knee while playing with a gun when he was 9 years old, and later spent time in juvenile detention for shooting someone with a BB. Now 15, that son has witnessed the shooting deaths of two close friends.

His 10-year-old nephew also was injured in the shooting that killed 15-year-old Tyler Jackson, five months after Wax died.

"It be hard when you're trying to do everything right for them but they still fall off track," Carrington said. "There's only so much you can do...hopefully everything works out for the best."

—

About this series: When people talk about area crime trends they use generalizations like, "gun violence is escalating in Toledo," or "homicides set a new city record." In reality, though, not all of Toledo is equally under fire.

Most of the gun violence is concentrated in high-poverty neighborhoods in the heart of the city, a Blade analysis of 2020 shooting incidents found, using these formulas: ([Total number of shooting incidents]/[Estimated population in a given Census tract]) x 1,000 = Crime rate per 1,000 capita, and Probability = 1,000/ Crime rate per 1,000 capita.

The data supports what residents say they've felt all along, where you live in Toledo dictates how safe you feel here.

In some neighborhoods in Central Toledo, shootings have become so prevalent that residents have a 1 in 12 chance of encountering gunfire there. That probability, for those living in more affluent neighborhoods along the outskirts of town, falls to 1 in 3,362. In six tracts, the probability was zero.

Blade reporter Kaitlin Durbin and Art Director Joe Landsberger produced this three-part series to help the community better understand what life is like for the residents trying to survive the rising gun violence, and where resources may have the greatest impact as the city searches for solutions.