MEMPHIS, Tenn. — “They beat him to death and then shot him several times.”
Leslie Martin lost two sons to gun violence.
“I miss my two children. Now my grandson done got killed? I’m hurting,” Martin said.
She was still waking up from a nightmare and found herself in the middle of chaos Monday night.
People shouted, screamed and said “black lives matter” at the meeting.
“We have lost a lot of lives as far as killing police officers over shooting, but wait a minute — let’s straighten up some things that we’re not doing,” Martin told WREG.
She said while protests are good, the real work starts at home.
“Get these parents to straighten out their children selling dope, gang banging,” Martin said.
She said it was not police who shot her sons, but it was their peers who did the killing.
“They don’t care. They done made a choice. Until God touches them, they not going to change,” Martin explained.
A change she hoped would start with the meeting and Sunday’s protest before things spiraled out of control.
“The meeting got out of order. It wasn’t conducted like it should have been,” Martin said.
Still, she and others hoped for action from the city.
