GARY | The attendees at Friday night's vigil outside World of Skates voiced competing emotions about a shooting that hurt eight teenagers last week: They are indignant and frustrated, but they are also grateful.
"Father, we could have been here for a sadder situation," prayed Charles Barbour, whose son was shot to death in Gary last year.
"In the roughness of it all, we just want to thank you, Father."
A few dozen Gary activists, clergymen, city politicians and residents huddled in the damp, hazy cold outside the shuttered skating rink on the city's West Side for speeches and prayers infused with anger, pride and religious conviction. Those gathered by activist Natalie Ammons said they are committed to short-circuiting the violence that has troubled the city.
A 17-year-old Gary resident is a "person of interest" in the shooting, which happened about 11:45 p.m. March 5 outside the skating rink. The business was hosting a show featuring Chattanooga, Tenn., rapper Wacka Flocka. The 17-year-old remains jailed on other felony charges. City officials closed the rink at Fifth Avenue and Clark Road for a code violation -- and the rink remained closed Friday night.
Ruth Booker, mother of a 16-year-old shooting victim, said her son remains in a lot of pain at the hospital. He was shot in the leg.
"He said when he came out the door, they just started shooting," Booker said.
Mayor Rudy Clay defended Gary's teenagers Friday night. He said the city has not recently suffered a homicide on school grounds. He praised police as "doing their job and doing it right."
"We will protect our young people," he said. "God smiled on them because nobody died."
Sabir Omar-Muhammad, of the Gary Commission on the Social Status of Black Males, said the solution to the problem lies with the men and boys who commit violent crimes.
"I don't care how many of them you put in jail; there's going to be another or more," he said.
Police Chief Gary Carter delivered a lengthy, occasionally funny, speech calling for parents to care for their kids and invoking eternal damnation as the punishment waiting for criminals who may elude earthly justice. He said the good and peaceful people of Gary vastly outnumber the dangerous few.
"Why can't we have a gang? They got a gang," he said.
"Our gang is bigger than their gang."
