CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A procession of hearses drove through Charlotte Sunday as a powerful symbol of the city’s violent crimes. Each one was empty, but represented a life lost to violence this year.
They passed through one Charlotte neighborhood, which has seen a lot of crime around Beatties Ford Road near Interstate 85. The State Funeral Directors Association organized this.
“We’re on a road that we should never be on, and this is a road of violence. Every single person in this city can help with the cause,” Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden said.
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Funeral directors did this because they’re the ones helping families bury their loved ones: fathers, mothers and children.
So many of these murders are unsolved, and they want people brought to justice for the families’ sake.
“We don’t want it to decrease. We don’t want it to go down a little bit. We want it to stop. That’s it,” McFadden said.
The procession ended in uptown with a dove release.
In Charlotte, 71 people have died due to violent crimes this year. At this time, in 2019, there were 63.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police released its second quarter crime statistics in July. The data showed violent crimes were up 2% from the first quarter of this year.
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