NEW ORLEANS (WGNO)— Nekisha McGlothen was just one of many mothers who had to endure the horrible phone call hearing her son Khyron Nellon was killed.
“I was hurt. I was in pain. I was angry,” McGlothen explained, just one day after the one-year anniversary of her son’s death.
Nellon was gunned down on Iberville Street in the summer of 2021. He died on August 1.
Now, 12 months later, The District Attorney’s office still has not determined if the alleged gunman, 16-year-old Frederick Carter, will be tried as an adult.
That decision, however, won’t change the pain for McGlothen or the thousands of other families dealing with the same trauma.
On Saturday, St. Anna’s Church in the South 7th Ward unveiled a memorial for victims of violence.
“It’s remembrance,” Deacon Luigi Mandile told WGNO’s Britney Dixon. “I feel they all should be remembered.”
The church has called on City Council to do their part and launch a Reparations Commission.
“There was a petition being signed asking the city council to consider reparations. I challenged them to get as many signatures as possible to give us the feel for what the public wants,” Councilman Eugene Green said. “But the general theory relative to reparations and to addressing some of the problems we have in the past and making our society better is something I can be supportive of.”
However, local activists said, they need to see more action from the council than just verbal support.
“We entertain [ideas] ‘at the moment’ and then the moments come and go, then another moment, then another,” Founder of HOPE Michael Willis said. “We can’t make this be the new normal.”