ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
When a tragedy like a mass school shooting happens, that story tends to dominate the news. But when we're thinking of kids and teens affected by guns, it's more the everyday violence that make up the numbers. In 2022, a Johns Hopkins study found that guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens. That's more than car crashes and cancer. And it's Black teens who disproportionately bear the brunt of that statistic. Journalist Jo Erickson wanted to know why and what could be done to change things. She spent nearly two years with teenagers, police units and a youth intervention specialist. And the result is the third season of the podcast Systemic from Colorado Public Radio. And she joins us now. Jo, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
JO ERICKSON, BYLINE: Hi. Thank you for having me.
LIMBONG: So Jo, this podcast explores why so many young people in Colorado get caught up in teen violence. And you touch on big issues, right? We're talking about economics and societal factors. But you tell the story through a few people, and I'm wondering if you could introduce us to Jason McBride.
ERICKSON: Jason is one of those people that is larger than life. He's a former Crips gang member who, back in the '80s, fell into a rough crowd, and he actually got shot. And from that moment on, he has turned his life around. And he spent decades trying to convince other young, Black men not to go down the path that he went through. He's now a youth intervention specialist. He's seen firsthand the pain and the misery gun violence creates in communities and with families, and sometimes it's really hard for him to shake some of this pain.
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JASON MCBRIDE: I hate talking about this. This is the worst. The night that it happened - the night it happened, it was like - it was just like it was yesterday. I was at this party, and a young man who was probably the same size as the AK-47 that shot him - that he shot Davarie with - this was a little boy, you know? - shot and killed him.
ERICKSON: So Davarie Armstrong, he was 17 years of age. He was a promising student. He was at a party, and he was shot and killed. One of the shooters was only 15 years of age. That is the types of people that Jason is trying to stop from getting into gun violence.
LIMBONG: Yeah. And one of these kids that he's trying to reach is a kid named Sam Elfay. Can you tell us about him?
ERICKSON: Sam was one of his first biggest successes. Sam was about 13 years of age when he started skipping school.
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SAM ELFAY: I figured a way to block my dad's phone number from the school system using their phone. So I wasn't in school much. My father would drop me off in the front, wait till he leaves or school starts, and I'm ditching every day.
ERICKSON: Here's Sam again, telling us what happened next.
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SAM: As you have more time on your hand, you start to think, what else can I do? How can I make more money? So then you start to take more risks, try to do badder (ph) things, I guess - right? - so robberies, burglaries. You end up finding a gun during one of those nights where you're checking people's cars. Now you have access to a gun, so now you're just trying and doing bigger things.
LIMBONG: I think I can see how Jason feels about these kids. How did the kids feel about Jason?
ERICKSON: Jason spends a lot of time with these kids, and the kids accept him. So Sam spent nearly two years with Jason. Sam was out of control. This is how Sam describes his first time when he held a gun.
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SAM: I remember that first feeling. It was, like, you're powerful. Nobody could stop you. So I remember that feeling that, OK, now, I'm going to be the big guy now, right? Now it's a - I don't care; I have a gun; you'll bow down to me - type of mentality.
ERICKSON: And so Jason, with the courts, put Sam on a plan of action. So for two years, on a daily basis, Jason worked with Sam so he could go back into education, get his high school graduate diploma and give him a fighting chance to stay away from crime. And that's not an easy thing for anyone to do.
LIMBONG: No. I can't imagine. Did this relationship between Sam and Jason - was it ever, like, tested?
ERICKSON: It was tested to the limit.
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SAM: One day, Jason took me, and I ended up getting shot at in front of him. Somebody I knew owed me some weed, and long story short, things didn't go as planned. Jason was parked in the parking lot. I'm at their car, ended up getting shot at, in broad day, tried lying to Jason. Jason's not trying to hear my lies. So I think when I seen how serious he was - he was about to fight me.
ERICKSON: So this is the moment that Sam realizes how much Jason cared for him.
LIMBONG: Now, you were saying before how Jason was helping Sam get back into school. Did Sam end up graduating?
ERICKSON: Oh, he did. It was one of the pride and joys of his life. He has graduated, and he stayed out of crime.
LIMBONG: You know, you've been working on this project for nearly two years. Did anything surprise you while you were doing the reporting?
ERICKSON: One of the biggest surprises for me was the number of young people under the age of 15 who had seen or handled a gun, or knew a friend who had a gun or a family member who had a gun, you know? and it wasn't just affecting one class of people, so low-income families. It was actually right across the board. And even the kids who were very fearful of guns and tried to stay away from guns, they also had to adjust 'cause they live with that expectation that someone close to them will have a gun.
LIMBONG: That's journalist Jo Erickson. Jo, thank you so much for sharing your reporting.
ERICKSON: Thank you so much.
LIMBONG: The third season of the Systemic podcast from Colorado Public Radio, which is focused on youth gun violence, is out now wherever you get your podcasts. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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