The grandson of Oakland City Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney is one of the city's latest murder victims in a year that has seen an uptick in the number of homicides compared to the previous two years.
Torian Hughes, 17, was killed this past Sunday, Dec. 20. Police say he was shot during an early afternoon robbery on Mandela Parkway, a couple of blocks from the West Oakland BART station, and died shortly afterward at a hospital.
McElhaney wrote about her grandson's death in a Facebook post earlier this week:
Thank you all for your outpouring of support as we mourn the untimely death of my 17 y/o grandson, Torian.
His death, and the shootings throughout Oakland that followed over the past two days, only strengthen my resolve for eradicating gun violence in our city. None of us, not one of us is immune. This crisis can be reversed.
Please keep our families in prayer. Torian has 2 younger brothers and a host of cousins, parents, aunts, uncles and loved ones who are deeply impacted by his death.
Hughes' killing was followed the next day by the fatal shooting of a man and a teenage boy near 32nd and West streets, also in was Oakland. That brought the number of homicides in the city to 92, according to the Oakland Police Department's weekly breakdown of crime statistics, including five fatal police shootings and four other "justifiable" killings. That's five more people than died at this point in 2014 and three more than in 2013.
Oakland is considering measures that would strengthen gun control in the city, including a law that would ban high-capacity magazines and require licensed firearms in homes to be stored in a locker or fitted with a trigger lock. The full City Council will take up the legislation when it returns to session, on Jan. 5.