ST. LOUIS — A tragic weekend shooting has many in St. Louis wondering what can be done.
Overnight Sunday, a downtown shooting killed one young person and seriously injured 11 others.
Following the shooting, the mayor's office announced it would expand recreation center hours through the summer to give teens a place to go.
Community members who spoke to 5 On Your Side, such as Eric Bailey, believe the only way this problem can be fixed is if everyone comes together.
"It's not only a duty for the elected officials, not just for the St. Louis police force and those that are in higher power to stand up and try to battle this, it's the community as a whole. Families need to come together; friends need to come together. Churches need to come together, the schools. It takes the whole city and community, as a whole, to be able to battle this pandemic of violence that we're facing," he said.
Five days a week, you'll find Bailey working at the BP gas station off Kingshighway Boulevard. But outside of the kitchen, he has something else cooking.
"It's been a long time coming. I've had this vision for quite some time," he said.
Bailey created a nonprofit 'Blessed Youth Outreach', focusing on mentoring teens who come from broken homes and poverty.
"I'm willing to travel wherever the need is to be able to help any adolescent who is in trouble and in need of encouragement and a change of life," he said.
That's because Bailey was one of those teens after one mistake got him in trouble with the law at 20 years old.
"I feel like it has gotten much worse. That's why I'm standing up to the point where I am now because I want to see it de-escalate, not escalate," he said.
What happened over the weekend in downtown St. Louis was far from de-escalation.
Kenya Brumfield-Young, assistant professor of criminology at Saint Louis University, said her initial reaction was sadness when she heard what happened.
"Very very just deep sadness that we continue to have like these cycles of events that these you know, these particular gatherings. In essence though, I don't place the onus on the gatherings themselves. There are so many other things that are transpiring," she said.
Brumfield-Young described teenagers' realities right now as "horrifying."
"Until we begin to have these conversations with them about that, I think we'll continue to have these particular instances," she said.
While Brumfield-Young believes every effort from the city is beneficial, she said, to really find a solution to the problem those conversations need to start.
"What do they want? What do they think they need? Because there's a lot of things that we can say and do as a community and say this will help, but if it's not something that they tap into as either being fun or engaging, they're not going to take part," she said.
According to Brumfield-Young, we have to understand these teenagers and the trauma many of them have already been through.
"Their reality is very different in that there are so many of them that feel that they can't even navigate their own neighborhoods going to the store and things like that, where they don't feel that they can do that safely and that they need some form of protection," she said.
Brumfield-Young was actually in Phoenix and spoke with law enforcement there, who told her they are experiencing the same problems with teenagers.
The city said they are also doing other things besides just expanding rec hours. Including major investments in youth programming and running the Summer Fun STL Program.
If you are interested in donating to Bailey's nonprofit, you can email him at blessedyouthoutreach@gmail.com.