“Walk for Peace” Scheduled In Response To Fatal Champaign Shooting

Community leaders are holding a peace walk Wednesday evening in a northwest Champaign neighborhood where two shootings occurred in the past couple of days, one of them fatal.

Participants will walk to the site in the Garden Hills subdivision where a man was fatally shot late Tuesday afternoon. The News-Gazette reports that the Champaign County Coroner has identified the man as 26 year old Allen M. Redding of Champaign.

The walk is being organized by Champaign County NAACP President Patricia Avery and Jericho Church Pastor Lekevie Johnson.

Champaign City Council member William Kyles plans to attend the walk. He says it’s important for the community to see that people are working in the community to put an end to the violence. The next step, he says, is connecting people with resources.

“In Champaign, we have a lot of great things going on in our community, but people don’t know”, said Kyles, who cited the United Garden Hills Neighborhood Association as a positive force in the neighborhood. “So we need to have some kind of door-to-door campaign, or community coalition or community walk, just to distribute information resources to people.”

Kyles says such an effort would be a first step towards addressing the conditions that have led to more than 15 gun-related crimes in Champaign in the last three weeks, according to the News-Gazette.

Tuesday’s fatal shooting came less than 24 hours after another shooting in the same part of Champaign. Police say a 22 year old man was shot and wounded while driving in the 2100 block of West White Street, also in northwest Champaign. In both shootings, police say shots were fired from moving cars. Five black males were being sought in connection with the Redding shooting.

The “Community Prayer for Peace Walk” event begins at 6:30 PM on Wednesday at Jericho Missionary Baptist Church, 1601 W. Bloomington Road.