Philadelphia City Council President Kenyatta Johnson honors police chaplains after 4th of July mass shooting
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Philadelphia City Council President Kenyatta Johnson honored police chaplains in the 12th District on Tuesday who were on the ground following the Fourth of July mass shooting in Kingsessing that left one man dead.
"These chaplains go door to door in Southwest Philadelphia providing a sense of hope, but most importantly, encouragement and support," Johnson said.
Pastor Beverly Clayburn is the president of the 12th District Chaplains. When she woke up and received news that a mass shooting in Kingsessing killed one person and injured eight others, she thought: "Oh no, not again."
Clayburn has been in this situation before. As she stood on the 1900 block of South Salford Street in Kingsessing, she remembered the call she received around this time last year when a gunman opened fire and killed five people and left several others injured in Kingsessing in 2023.
"One of the things I do, I never make it normal," Clayburn said. "It is not normal for young people, anyone, to lose their life. And after all the cameras are gone, after everybody has left, we come back out here."
Clayburn's team offers much-needed compassion and spiritual guidance to the neighborhood and officers following gun violence.
"The blood is gone," Clayburn said. "It's like nothing ever happened but someone's life gone. But somebody has been changed forever and so what we have to do is get ahold of them. Talk to those young people and not just young people. It's not just them. When you feel like you're without hope, you will pass that one."
Beverly and her chaplains will take part in a peace walk on Saturday, and she said her team will continue to provide hope to the community.
"I want to see lives changed," she said. "People changed, things changed. That's my hope. That's my heart."
