Police are investigating two shootings in just two months at the same apartment complex. Residents hope to put an end to the violence with the help of religious leaders and police.

Police say they have the suspected shooter in the latest murder. 25-year-old Frederick Schinder is accused of shooting Antonio Mooney to death. But residents who live in the apartment complex near Martin Luther King and Balzar, where the two shootings happened, say it needs to be about more than punishing violence — it has to be about stopping it.

They hold hands in prayer and are thankful. This time, police officers were invited guests, instead of responding to another murder. Over the weekend, Mooney was killed after he found his girlfriend's apartment ransacked and an argument with neighbors got heated.

“Looked over and we saw the crowd and suddenly the voices escalated and I turned to go back into my apartment. Within five minutes the gentleman was shot,” said neighbor Melva Washington.

Police say Mooney was killed as he headed back upstairs — shot from across a sidewalk where children were playing.

“This four-year-old little girl that the bullet flew right over her head, it is just heart breaking and she was still traumatized,” said Pastor Troy Martinez with Safe Village.

Residents say they've seen too many lives taken right in front of them.

“The shooting that happened just a few weeks ago, before then the guy was shot, as he went past my bedroom window I looked out and literally saw him being shot,” said Washington.

Now they're saying enough is enough, and with the support of each other and police, they are taking back their neighborhood.

“Somebody has to say, ‘I am going to stick in and I am going to do my best part. I am going to try and make things better and I know it is not just me,'” said Washington.

Melva has lived here for three years and says she is about to sign another lease. She believes things can and will change, especially if parents start teaching kids what is truly right and wrong.

“I believe that our kids are born a blank slate, and we have the power to make them geniuses or we have the power to make them hoodlums,” she said.

Email your comments to Reporter Amanda Hernandez

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.