Heartbroken citizens took to the streets to protest the death of 28-year-old mother Thiasia “Latte Lynn”Williams who was killed in the Hempstead/Uniondale, New York by a stray bullet on August 1st. A march was held to show that something needs to be done about gun violence in the community.
“We are marching for peace, we are marching for justice, and we are marching to bring back love into our communities,” said family friend of Latte, Kassandra Williams who was one of the organizers of the demonstration held on August 16th. Kassandra has dealt with the horrors of gun violence with the death other friends, but she said Latte’s death hit the hardest. “Let’s take guns off the streets, let’s give these children something to do when they get out of school! It has to start somewhere!”
She had plans of getting into the non-profit side of Doula but she lost her life picking up her boyfriend from a party.
“Right now, what we are trying to show is that innocent women and kids should not be a victim of gun violence. Like I told them in the press conference, it’s not Hempstead, it’s the dumb people in Hempstead,” said Latte’s boyfriend, Rayvonne Jacobs. “Its these kids running around doing stupid stuff. The people that did this? They are young. I don’t know who it did, but I know that. Its only young kids riding around doing dumb stuff so what we are doing right now is really trying to push that we need to take back our town. Nobody should die from gun violence. They took my girl away from me. They took a mother, a friend, they took a daughter away unnecessarily.”
Latte leaves behind her 7-year-old son Noel and her death was one of many due to gun violence and it didn’t receive much media coverage. Her friends and family came together for a demonstration to demand change in their town amidst the rain. The crowd marched to Hempstead town Hall to where she was murdered on MLK Drive.
