Gun violence in Akron ignores neighborhood boundaries

Connette Long’s granddaughter avoided house parties — there was too much of a chance something could go wrong. 

But 18-year-old La’Shae Ellis loved to dance, Long said, and went to a party in Akron’s Summit Lake neighborhood to do just that. Ellis’ aunt, Jonnette Long, remembered commenting on one of the teen’s Instagram posts about her costume, telling her how beautiful she was, and to be safe. 

Less than an hour later, La’Shae was shot and killed — two other teens were injured — after a fight broke out at the party on Oct. 26, 2024. Her death was one of two fatal shootings in the city that weekend.

“You should be able to go to a Halloween party and make it home safe,” Long said. 

From the outside looking in, the random nature of the shooting that left Ellis dead appears similar to one June 6 in the bar district of Highland Square that injured several people.

Like Ellis, who went out for an evening of fun with her friend, those injured in Highland Square were not prepared for a shooting — they went out for drinks, to dance, to enjoy the city’s nightlife, to not be caught in the crossfire. 

The essence of gun violence in Akron is something the Long family, and others are well aware of. And while the Highland Square neighborhood experiences it, it’s not the only area affected. It happens in every pocket of the city — from outside bars and house parties, to pee wee football games at Lane Field and in public parks.

In the first half of 2026, Akron Police responded to more than 700 shootings and shots fired calls throughout the city, including a dozen homicides spanning Kenmore, West Akron, North Hill and beyond. 

“I feel so bad for all the moms, the dads, the grandparents, sisters, brothers that lose their loved ones to any kind of violence,” said Long, who knows Ellis’ shooting is far from the only one in Akron. 

Addressing that violence is the city’s highest priority, Mayor Shammas Malik said during a press conference after the shooting in Highland Square. 

“Not because of where it happens, not because of who it happens to, not because of who perpetrated it, not because of whether it makes headlines or not — it is unacceptable because human life matters.”

Addressing gun violence is a city priority

The June 6 Highland Square shooting, which happened despite private security and Akron Police officers nearby, prompted a response from City Hall — a press conference was held the following Thursday on the second floor of the Mustard Seed Market & Cafe, which overlooks the block where the shooting took place.

The city announced plans for the after-hours closure of a city-owned parking lot for the upcoming weekend and early, voluntary bar closures along West Market Street for June 12 and 13. 

Highland Square was quiet for the weekend, with no reports of shots fired or other incidents; but even as Akron Mayor Shammas Malik announced the temporary changes, gunfire in North Hill injured a 19-year-old man. 

For those working within the city to quell violence, it can feel like some neighborhoods have been written off, like the gunfire is an expected background noise. 

Cordell Walker Sr. works with kids and teens, many living in the Buchtel Cluster. 

“I deal with the youth they consider troubled,” said Walker, a West Akron native. “So when it’s hard for me to get [support] from the city … it’s kind of a slap in the face with them saying maybe they don’t really want it to stop? I’m not sure.”

Walker understands where the young men he mentors are coming from — and the impact poor choices can have on their lives. He served eight and a half years in prison after he shot a man during an argument outside an Akron gas station on Vernon Odom Boulevard in 2015.

When he came home in 2024, he knew he had a chance to be the person he needed when he was younger, he said, so he started HYPE (Helping Young People Elevate). He mentors young people in the city, visits them in juvenile detention and speaks from his own experiences in the hopes they stop and think before picking up a gun. 

Walker measures the work he and his cousin, Butchie Walker, executive director of Village Keepers of Ohio, do in fewer funerals and more job opportunities. 

Success is a teen calling him or Butchie before rushing headlong into an unsafe situation, or giving local kids mentorship and community events to attend. The pair often pay for things out of their own pockets, they said, and try to be preventative — not reactive to what is happening in their city. 

“We can see what can happen in the future … with mental health and things like that,” Butchie Walker said. “We need to work on that — everybody’s got attitudes or short tempers or thin skin. We’re working on stuff like that. The education part is all part of [this.]”

When the city announced a new initiative, Partnership for Intervention, Violence Outreach and Transformation — PIVOT — to support gun violence victims and their families after shots have already been fired, Walker was frustrated by the reactionary nature of the program rather the city providing further support for preventative measures. 

The partnership between the City of Akron, Summa Health, Cleveland Clinic Akron General and Minority Behavioral Health Group will place counselor Angelo Anderson in the city’s emergency rooms to speak to gunshot victims and their families to try to curb retaliatory violence. 

Cleveland has operated a similar violence intervention program at MetroHealth and University Hospitals’ emergency rooms for years. 

During June 13’s Legacy Weekend event downtown, Pastor Deante Lavender of the Remedy Church said the program is needed, but he wonders why.

“There are so many people getting shot in our community that they’re now taking money to fund programs so that we can visit families and give them trauma response care and help them maintain their mentality so they don’t lose their mind” he told a crowd of fathers and sons at Cascade Plaza. 

“Yes, it is needed, but my question is ‘Why?’ … We can’t funnel money where we need to, because we have to funnel money to people to go visit gunshot victims inside of the hospital because they keep on popping up.”  

Asking why Akron teens feel they need a gun in the first place

Kemp Boyd, executive director of Love Akron, is often in the room where discussions occur following gun violence. 

His Locker Room Experience program at Garfield Community Learning Center brings together students from six Akron Public high schools to give those teens a voice on addressing challenges in their communities. 

Mental health, guns, sex and drugs can be polarizing conversation topics, Boyd said, but those conversations are needed just the same. And those conversations must include asking teens why they feel they need a gun in the first place. 

It is a question Boyd said he is still terrified to ask, even after years of outreach, coaching and mentorship in the city.

“We have to get out of our silos and we have to get back to what it looks like to be a community again, to be a village again or to be a neighborhood again,” Boyd said. “To where we are looking out for the best interests of one another … I think we all have a responsibility to one another, we all have a responsibility to be the change that our city needs.” 

North Hill Community House can’t save the whole city, but it can help its own block

Gary Wyatt, and his wife, Patricia, have been changemakers in their North Hill neighborhood for decades. The pair founded North Hill Community House, not to save the city, but to take care of one block at a time. 

Wyatt, a U.S. Navy veteran and retired U.S. Postal Service worker, said he’d be a fool to think he could save all of Akron — but he can feed the kids near North Howard and East York streets. He can gain the respect of the community and try to deter violence from the community center’s doorstep.

For young people carrying guns in Akron, there is a disconnect between the decision to pick up a weapon and the weight of the consequences it carries, he said. 

The Highland Square shooting earlier this month was part of that, he said. In addition to the police officers nearby, there were cameras and hundreds of innocent bystanders — but the retail district still became the “Wild West,” he said. 

“If you just gotta shoot somebody, go to the Army,” Wyatt said. 

Wyatt’s efforts in North Hill focus on reaching young men and women at an early age. Preventative maintenance, he calls it — working with kids as young as preschool to change their mentality and keep the only guns in their arsenal those filled with water for hot summer days. 

“If we can get one kid at a time, one life at a time, one block at a time, then we have done our job,” Wyatt said. “But our job is not to be the hero. We just need to serve people, that’s all … I gotta give back, I gotta help somebody.”

While North Hill Community House takes care of Howard Street, others will have to step up and fill the gaps in their own neighborhoods, he said. 

Kenmore grapples with negative perception 

In Kenmore, where a man was shot and killed in May, the shock can be hard to recover from, City Council Member Tina Boyes said. 

Random gun violence — like that in Highland Square — is uncommon in her ward’s neighborhoods, she said, but even a targeted shooting can shock a community trying to rekindle its business district on the city’s southwest side. 

Still, she said there is sometimes a perception that bad things happen in Kenmore simply because it is Kenmore. 

“You’ve got folks in the community working really hard to change those impressions and negative perceptions of what may be in the past,” Boyes said. 

Kenny Lambert, owner of Just a Dad from Akron, is one of those people. His Kenmore Boulevard storefront is full of handmade shirts with positive messages, and a portion of his proceeds benefit neighborhood outreach. Lambert hosted a community prayer event days after the May 27 shooting. 

Born and raised in the neighborhood, Lambert remembers growing up skateboarding along the Boulevard — and then being homeless on it while he was in active addiction. 

Once sober, the west side dad decided to use his own experiences to reach those in addiction, homeless or in gangs, he said. 

“Anyone can do it, anyone can turn their life around and change,” he said. “No matter how far gone you think your life is.” 

‘Layered and complex issue’ afflicts city

The week after Highland Square’s bars closed early and its parking lots became tow-away zones after midnight, Akron Ward 1 Council Member Fran Wilson sat outside the Mary Coyle Ice Cream shop on West Market Street. 

For Wilson, the solution to Highland Square’s challenges does not lie in blocked parking lots, concrete barriers reducing street parking in front of the district’s bars or increased police patrols. 

“What we have is a pretty layered and complex issue,” they said, adding that the failure for gun control at the state and federal level have left Akron to “pick up the pieces and try to figure out a way out of this.”

West Market Street business owners have pooled their funds to create a Special Improvement District to help pay for beautification projects, cameras and improved lighting, Wilson said, trying to “fill a lot of the gaps that have been left wide open for years.” 

Like Highland Square, Kenmore boasts a sprawling business district along Kenmore Boulevard, where mom-and-pop shops fill storefronts while its vendors and patrons keep their eyes on the street, Boyes said. 

Its business owners do not have the same resources to hire private security as the more established spaces in Highland Square. 

“We have emerging, new businesses and folks that are getting their first brick-and-mortar shop alongside some longtime businesses,” Boyes said. “We have a mix of newcomers and old-timers, and neither of them have the bandwidth or finances to do something on their own.” 

Instead, she looks to what can be done incrementally — like a block watch or something akin to Downtown Akron Partnership’s ambassadors. 

“A way we can combat violence in our community is to continue to show up in our community,” Boyes said. “The more time you spend building community, the stronger and safer communities will be — and knowing your neighbors, knowing what’s going on around you, that’s important.”  

Highland Square would like to see more investment rather than restrictions, Wilson said. 

“We have a state of disconnection that is rearing its head in a lot of different forms,” Wilson said. “I think what’s great about what we’re doing here is that we’re getting every single aspect of the issues at the table, in some form or other, and we’re tackling them bit-by-bit. We’re filling that void in relationships with a lot of conversation and action.” 

Memorial scholarship offers a pathway out

La’Shae Ellis was part of those conversations. 

When 25-year-old Jayland Walker was shot and killed by Akron Police in 2022, the Akron Urban League established a Young Adult Council to give the city’s 16-to-26-year-olds a platform to discuss the issues facing their community. Ellis was part of that effort.  

She had graduated a year early from Buchtel Community Learning Center and was attending Stark State College — with plans to transfer to Spelman College in Atlanta — when she was killed. She had wanted to open a daycare, and she had worked at the Summa Early Education and Learning Center.

“Whoever shot my granddaughter, they took away the daycare we were going to have,” Long said. “They took away a beautiful soul — she loved everyone.” 

They also took away the family’s sense of safety. 

Even when attending Ellis’ brother’s high school graduation this year, Long and her daughter, Jonnette, remember the unease they felt when standing outside a church where the ceremony was held. It was a happy occasion, Long said, but they didn’t want to gather outside. 

“You just don’t know,” she said. 

While Ellis’ family waits for a break in her case — imploring those with information to come forward — they are keeping her legacy alive. 

The La’Shae M. Ellis Legacy Scholarship provides funds for graduates from Buchtel CLC who were like her: members of the National Honor Society, hard workers, givers. 

Long hopes it can help spare others her family’s pain, perhaps help recipients go away to college, change their environment and get away from gun violence.