ALLENTOWN, Pa. – “He was a phenomenal young man. He was loving, comes from a loving family,” said Hasshan Batts, the Executive Director of Promise Neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
22-year-old Najeer Lane was shot and killed in Allentown last August. Now, three people are being charged in his death: 24-year-old Xavier Grenon, 20-year-old Legious Minder Jr., and 23-year-old Frederick Marks.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t care if it took a year to two years, as long as we got the individuals responsible for Najeer’s death,” said Shalon Buskirk, Najeer’s mother.<\/p>\n
Buskirk says she’s exhausted.<\/p>\n
“I’m tired of it, I’m tired every time I read the news or see somebody get shot,” said Buskirk. “I’m so emotionally and mentally drained.”<\/p>\n
Najeer was the second son she’s had to mourn because of gun violence.<\/p>\n
“It’s gotta stop, it’s gotta stop,” said Buskirk.<\/p>\n
In 2017, she lost her son Parris Lane. His killer, Joshwynn Garcia, is behind bars.<\/p>\n
“No mother should have to bury two of their children,” said Buskirk.<\/p>\n
Batts says situations like this could be avoided if the city’s youth had more outlets.<\/p>\n
“We have to find places and ways in which youth can belong,” said Buskirk.<\/p>\n
“We know that extra work, we know the arts work, music works, sports work, there have to be outlets for children.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – “He was a phenomenal young man. He was loving, comes from a loving family,” said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,28],"class_list":["post-185183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-pennsylvania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}