After a shooting last weekend interrupted Eighth of August celebrations in Paducah last weekend, more than 100 people gathered at a town hall meeting Thursday evening to talk about how the community could try to prevent similar tragedies in the future.
The shooting – which left one person dead and two others injured – took place outside of the Brickhouse nightclub in downtown Paducah early Saturday morning in the middle of a days-long celebration honoring the regional Emancipation Day holiday. Multiple organizers said the incident occurred outside of officially scheduled events for the Eighth of August in the far western Kentucky city.
Twenty-year-old Jamiyah Walker of Paducah died after being removed from life support on Wednesday, according to the Paducah Police Department. Walker was pregnant at the time of her death.
Three people – 18-year-old Malik Q. Copeland of Paducah, 18-year-old Capus J. Adams of Murray and an unidentified 16-year-old boy from Paducah – have been charged with complicity to commit first-degree murder and complicity to commit first-degree fetal homicide in connection with Walker’s death, along with other charges related to the other two people who were shot on Saturday. A fourth person – 20-year-old Jystacye D. Pitts of Union City, Tennessee – was charged with first-degree wanton endangerment following the shooting.
Earlier this week, the Paducah Police Department announced the death of 32-year-old Sgt. Ryan Hudson. On Friday, Paducah Police Chief Brian Laird said Hudson’s death was caused by an underlying cardiac condition that was triggered by the stress of responding to Saturday’s shooting. Laird said, because of that, Hudson’s death would be classified as having taken place in the line of duty.
Leaders with the Paducah-McCracken County NAACP, along with the W.C. Young Community Center and the Eighth of August Emancipation Celebration Steering Committee, organized the Thursday town hall meeting. Amina Watkins, first vice president for the local NAACP chapter, said it was meant to give space for people to share ideas on how to move forward.
“How can we work together – with the community, the elected officials, with the city, with the police department, and with the organizers of the Eighth of August, W.C. Young [Community Center] and the NAACP – how can we all work together to prevent something like this from happening again?” Watkins said.
It’s the second consecutive year in which a shooting has taken place outside of Brickhouse following Eighth of August Emancipation Day celebrations. However, several community members said the downtown Paducah nightclub isn’t to blame for events that happen outside of the establishment’s doors.
“This meeting is not about the Brickhouse, right? It's about the people in the community,” NAACP local president J.W. Cleary told the crowd. “I don't want to make it sound negative but, for our young folks, we gotta get control [in] some kind of way.”
Staff members representing the nightclub also attended the meeting and expressed condolences for the victims of the shooting.
Some of the community members who spoke at Thursday’s event had short-term suggestions that could be implemented at future events surrounding the Eighth of August. Others, meanwhile, wanted to spark long-lasting cultural changes in Paducah.
Rhonda McCorry-Smith, who grew up in McCracken County, suggested that police set up a one-block perimeter around Brickhouse during next year’s Eighth of August holiday.
However, much of the night was focused on how the community should protect children.
Dorothea Davis, president of the Paducah Diversity Advocacy Board, said community members need to advocate for children in the city and create a safe environment for them to grow up, keep them away from negative influences and set them up to become successful adults.
“We produce amazing people from this community – young Black people. We want to keep doing that, and I ask that you please consider having events for them, concerts, whatever the case is,” Davis said “We've got to do something for our kids. We can't just blame them, because they always [doing] this and always [doing] that. We have to protect them first.”
Local business owner and former pro football player George Wilson said, when he celebrated the Eighth of August as a child, it was a family and culture-centered event. Now, he said residents have let it become “something that it was never intended to be.” In the future, Wilson said that the Paducah community should take back ownership of the event and collectively work toward making the celebration something positive and meaningful.
“We want to bring back the essence of what the Eighth of August celebration is. We can't keep doing what we've been doing. Otherwise, we're going to keep getting what we've been getting,” Wilson said.
Watkins said the NAACP will put together an action plan based on suggestions from the town hall.
“This is not something the NAACP can do alone,” she said. “We're going to need our community to come together and we can do this together.”
