Mayor Evans addresses another weekend of violence as Rochester hits 24 homicides

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — We’re coming off another violent weekend in the city after eight shootings, including a deadly one on Driving Park Avenue Sunday afternoon.

We’re ahead of where we were this time last year when it comes to homicides in the city and Mayor Malik Evans said it’s definitely frustrating and said it comes down to a collaboration of community members stepping up to see a change.

“We could have had even more people could have died,” Mayor Evans said. “So the shootings are just as concerning as well. So we are very concerned about the number of shootings that we’re seeing in our community.”

Mayor Evans said most of the violence has a common denominator.

“Some of them are domestic between partners,” Evans said. “Others have to do with disputes. They are straight-up disputes. They are fights that escalate with somebody pulling out a gun and shoot someone and almost all of these disputes that we saw this weekend are that.”

On Sunday alone there were five shootings and on Saturday there were three. The shootings took place on Driving Park Avenue, Dewey Avenue, Glide Street, York Street, Ontario Street, Parsells Avenue, Bernard Street and Joseph Place.

The youngest victim is a 14-year-old boy who is expected to be ok.

“We have a proliferation of illegal guns that are on our streets,” Evans said. “That is absolutely unacceptable and people are using them to settle disputes and that’s not the way to go.”

Mayor Evans is vetting a small group of candidates for police chief and narrowing down the list soon, News10NBC’s Raven Brown asked if the increase in shootings and homicides will be a big factor.

“But it calls for is a community approach, because I can have a million police officers and that won’t solve all the problems, because if people don’t want to cooperate if they don’t want to come forward,” Evans said. “The police department, the mayor and city hall are just one piece of the equation. There’s a larger piece of the equation, and that is the community coming together to say, you know what, enough is enough.”

All of these shootings are under investigation and no one is in custody.

Just last week Mayor Evans announced a new plan to curb the violence in the city called the Rochester Peace Collective. It will include job training, conflict resolution, youth development and mental health support.