Funeral director says Chicago gun violence destroying city
(CBS News) CHICAGO -- The Leak and Sons funeral home has been on Chicago's South Side for 80 years. Spencer Leak Sr. arranges 2,000 funerals a year. More and more, they are for shooting victims.
Leak says he's arranged about 45 gun-violence-related funerals so far this year.
That's about the number of murders last year in Seattle and Tampa, combined.
"A significant portion of my day is spent trying to counsel with mothers who have lost sons through gun violence," Leak says. "I saw three mothers over the weekend. I'm waiting to see a mother today, possibly another."
"My heart goes out to her, because I know what's happening to her ... I just can't turn her down or away," he says.
Leak says the hardest part of his job is "the age of the young people."
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"The fact that they are victims of just rage, rampant violence, not necessarily directed toward them," he says.
One was Jonylah Watkins. She was hit by a bullet meant for her father.
"I buried this little baby -- six months old -- the most beautiful baby you would ever see," Leak says. "A baby girl killed in her father's lap. That just goes all through me -- it makes my stomach turn to have to do that. I'm angry, I'm sad."
"I just worry about my grandchildren having to live in a city that's so divided that we're destroying ourselves," he says.
"They come to these funerals, they come by the thousands to see young people lying in a casket," Leak says. "They are looking to experience the same fate, because of the nature of our city. We in the black community, people like myself, we must come together, band together and stop the division that exists in our city, and then try to turn around some lives."
The man Leak buried Wednesday was 40-year-old Clifton Balentine. He was at a cookout when someone walked up to him and his group of friends and opened fire.