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PHILADELPHIA – Inside Temple University Hospital’s trauma center, Scott Charles tells the story of 16-year-old Lamont Adams.
“He’ll see the young man who’s pointing a .40-caliber handgun toward his back. That young man will shoot Lamont four times and drop Lamont,” he said, scanning the tight corridor filled with students. “Then that young man will stand over Lamont at point-blank range, he will shoot Lamont 10 times more.”
Charles continues describing the final moments of the teen's young life in disturbing detail.
“Lamont is going to have a bullet wound right here, and Lamont is going to have a bullet wound right there,” he said, placing red stickers across the torso of a student who volunteered to lay on a trauma gurney. “He’s going to have another bullet wound right here and one right here and anther bullet wound right here and here.”
Charles is the hospital’s trauma outreach coordinator and his audience today wasn't medical students. Instead, a group of at-risk teens are visiting the hospital as part of the Cradle to Grave program he helped create in the hope of reducing gun violence in what is supposed to be the City of Brotherly Love.
Lamont was shot more than a dozen times – the sheer number of bullet wounds shocking enough to crack some students' tough exteriors. After doctors feverishly worked on Lamont, he wouldn’t survive his wounds and died in the trauma room in 2005.
In Philadelphia, young people – especially young men – are at the greatest risk of dying from gun violence. In fact, for black men between the ages of 15 and 24, guns are the leading cause of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leaving many public health officials asking for gun violence to be treated like a contagious disease.
“Gun violence in particular is contagious. How many of you know someone who has Ebola?” Charles asked the students, noting that nobody raised a hand and pointing out how much news coverage that disease received in the past year. “How many of you know someone who has been shot?” This time, nearly every student raised his or her hand.
Scott Charles
Hospital trauma outreach coordinator
Dr. Amy Goldberg, the hospital’s chief trauma surgeon, helped start Cradle to Grave with Charles. They attack the epidemic of gun violence by sharing hard medical facts with the teens in the program.
“We have found that the kids and the students, what they see on TV, what they hear on the radio, what they might see on a video game is what they think happens if they were to sustain some type of gunshot wound,” Goldberg said, adding that telling her trauma unit sees about 400 gunshot patients a year. “We felt we needed to give them the real education of what can occur after you get shot.”
When it's her turn to address the students, she demonstrates tools like a rib spreader that doctors can use to access a gunshot victim's heart and other vital organs.
Now in its tenth year, Cradle To Grave teaches teens – mostly at-risk students from Philadelphia – the true horrors of gun violence.
As for its effectiveness, Charles estimates that of the 10,000 students who have gone through the one-day program, only 15 to 20 returned to Temple's hospital as gunshot victims. Of those, only one or two died.
Eighteen-year-old Joey Lopez was among the students who toured Temple's level one trauma center. Like most high school seniors, he can’t wait for prom and he’s looking forward to getting his diploma. But the odds have been stacked against him since birth.
Lopez was born and raised in a rough section of North Philly. For a short time his family lived near the intersection where Lamont Adams was gunned down. With his father in jail, Lopez's mother struggled to make ends meet, he said.
“[We] went from one hood to another hood to another hood. Some people were selling drugs, some people not, some people doing drugs, some people not,” he said. “I was in a bad crowd, a very bad crowd, and some of the people that I was with back then in the hood is not here right now. Some are dead, some in jail.”
Even with programs like Cradle to Grave, students like Lopez can easily fall through the cracks. So when he began to stumble and almost didn’t graduate, Camelot Aspira Excel Academy, an alternative school, was there to catch him.
After graduating, Lopez plans on attending college to pursue a degree in accounting. He hopes to have a summer job lined up to help cover expenses.
On a recent May morning, Sadiqa Lucas, executive director for Aspira Excel Academy, addressed a group of students sitting silently in the school’s gymnasium.
“I need you guys to understand that education in the classroom is sacred,” Lucas said. “I just want to take this time out to say I am proud of all of you. Why? Because giving up was not an option.”
Lucas, whose own cousin was shot and killed in Philadelphia, takes a group of students through the Cradle to Grave program each semester with the goal of keeping them on the path to success, she said.
She also tries to make a difference in the classroom. The accelerated program works with students struggling academically and gets them to graduate on time with a high school diploma. The academy provides not only intense academic support but also much-needed social and emotional help.
“A true example is when I pull up for work and there’s a student waiting by the door, and the student is waiting because they don’t have heat at home, the student is waiting because this is their first meal that they are going to receive,” she said. “One student was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and then had a frown. Once I pulled the student aside, I’m told, ‘Well ma’am my cousin got shot last night.’”
Greek philosopher Aristotle once wrote that poverty is the parent of crime. The socioeconomic problems that continue to confront major U.S. cities are complex and there are no quick fixes.
In Philadelphia, a city plagued by poverty and gun violence, nearly 26 percent of residents live below the poverty line, with child poverty hovering close to 36 percent, according to the city's Department of Public Health.
Meanwhile, some 60 percent of city children live in a household headed by a single parent, and just 61 percent of high school students graduate in four years. Yet there are still thousands of students across the city who won’t get much-needed support like Lopez has.
While the city struggles to curb the epidemic of gun violence, the Cradle to Grave program will continue to show teens how horrible the final moments can be for victims, and educators like Lucas will continue to guide students toward a better path.
“[For] some of my students this is all they have, this family atmosphere here,” she said of her school's program. “So when you hear the question, 'Write down how many people love you,' and when you look to the left, and there is a student who doesn’t write anything, it lets me know, one, I’m in the right profession, two, we got some work to do.”
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When it comes to gun violence, homicides generally receive the most attention. But often overlooked are those who survive gunshot wounds and the long road of recovery, plus the enormous costs that go with it.
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