City Leaders Answer Brookline Residents' Questions About Recent Violence

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Residents from Pittsburgh's Brookline community shared their concerns about recent violence with city leaders, police and anti-violence groups.

The pain and frustration caused by violence were felt in Brookline on Monday night. City Councilman Anthony Coghill hosted a community conversation at Tree of Life Open Bible Church. It came after a deadly shooting in the community last Tuesday night that killed 29-year-old Devonte White.

Dozens of Brookline residents asked about the spike in shootings, unsolved homicide cases, response times and how to help.

"We're first and foremost to listen and secondly inform any information we can give to the residents We want to keep them informed and to offer services that the city has," Coghill said.

Residents asked questions directly to Pittsburgh Police Chief Scott Schubert, Mayor Ed Gainey, and other officials and community leaders.

"I'm sitting here and saying, 'Where are they getting all these drugs?'" Gainey said.

"Where are they getting the guns?" a resident asked Gainey.

"When you got guns and drugs like we do, the only way we gonna win this is together," Gainey said.

Jessica Hays, a local mother, spoke up during the community forum on Monday. Hays' 15-year-old son, Christian Redinger, was shot and killed in Brookline in June 2021. She said no arrests have been made in his case. She wants her son to be remembered as a good kid who made others laugh and worked hard in school, not as the victim of one of the first shootings when a spike in violence began.

"Everybody here deserves to have peace. I feel like I'm being terrorized in my own home, in my own body, every day, not knowing if he's going to get justice soon or later in life. Justice won't bring him back, but all this needs to stop," Hays said.

Chief Schubert said the spike in violence over the last week and a half has been intense and heartbreaking. He said he and his officers are here for all city residents as they work hard on every homicide case.

"We have to do everything we can as a community to come together, because it's a small number of people who are most violent and do what we can to get them off the street and make the community safer," Schubert said.

A community member asked for an update on White's case. A detective said they are looking for video and asking anyone who heard or saw anything to call the police. People can call the Crime Unit at 412-323-7131.

Pittsburgh Police ask anyone with information about any recent violent crimes to call them.