{"id":288609,"date":"2026-05-29T07:12:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T07:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/288609\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T07:12:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T07:12:27","slug":"childs-park-community-advocates-push-for-investment-in-youth-programs-after-14-year-olds-murder-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/288609\/","title":{"rendered":"Childs Park community advocates push for investment in youth programs after 14-year-old’s murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bay Area Dream Defenders and councilmember Corey Givens think more investment in peer support programs is needed to help at-risk youth across St. Pete.<\/p>\n

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 The family of Gaige Santos-Brown<\/a> continues to mourn the 14-year-old\u2019s murder, with St. Pete police saying three other teenagers are responsible<\/a> for his death. They\u2019re also asking for more local efforts to help at-risk youth avoid a life of guns, crime and falling in with the wrong crowd.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We have to get our kids off the streets and into some sort of program or something that keeps our kids busy, because if we don’t keep them busy, they’re going to find something themselves,\u201d his sister, Selena Abbott, said.<\/p>\n


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Three teens are now charged with his murder.<\/p>\n

Gaige\u2019s family laments that there’s not enough being done to help families keep their kids away from guns and the wrong crowd. Councilmember Corey Givens grew up two blocks from where Gaige was killed in Childs Park. He thinks the city should spend more on diversion programs as budget talks are underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to put our money where our mouth is,\u201d he said. \u201cI don’t think four million dollars in funds for youth education opportunities is enough, especially when you look at an almost billion-dollar budget. It’s just it’s a drop in the bucket.<\/p>\n

Community advocate Sierra Clark has lobbied City Hall to include funding for \u201cSave our Streets,\u201d which would hire peer support specialists and embed them in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve been talking to the city for years now about the ‘Save our Streets’ campaign,\u201d she said. \u201cWe do have a bunch of programs, but maybe those programs are underfunded. Maybe those programs aren’t actually getting to the doors of the people who need those resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

But at hurricane expo Wednesday night, Mayor Ken Welch pushed back, saying there’s only so much the city can do.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve put millions of dollars into diversionary programs, and we’re open to doing more,\u201d he said. \u201cPrograms themselves are not going to solve this problem. We have to have the community. We have to have families buy into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councilmember Givens is helping organize a neighborhood conversation on Thursday night to help heal after this latest teenage murder. It’s at Childs Lake Park at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bay Area Dream Defenders and councilmember Corey Givens think more investment in peer support programs is needed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-288609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}