DETROIT (WXYZ) — The Gesu Catholic Church hosted their ninth annual walk against gun violence Friday evening, which included a teacher who was inside the classroom near where the first shots rang out during the Oxford High School shooting in 2021.
The church began hosting this walk in 2015 after one of their parishioners was shot in a robbery attempt gone wrong.
"That was a month and a half before Easter," walk organizer James Sweeney said about the incident. "Ever since... we’ve done a walk against gun violence on Good Friday.”
The walk began with a brief ceremony where former Oxford High School teacher Lauren Jasinski spoke about the traumas associated with gun violence. The Oxford High School shooter began his rampage right outside her classroom on Nov. 30, 2021.
“Upon hearing the first couple shots, I immediately barricaded our doors, locked in the students that I was with and waited," she recalled.
Jasinski is a member of No Future Without Today, a gun violence advocacy group that was founded by Oxford High School students, parents and community members. She said attending the walk is an important step in keeping the conversation going about gun safety.
“What happened to us at Oxford is such a small piece of the gun violence picture across our state," she said. “There’s so much attention immediately following these types of events and then it trickles off. So the fact that these events still happen is really important.”
Jasinski says No Future Without Today will be hosting and participating in a number of rallies in June, which is Gun Violence Awareness Month.
