LYNN — Dozens of people gathered outside City Hall Wednesday night for a candlelight vigil for peace.
The vigil was organized in response to a pair of shootings last week, the second of which claimed the lives of two Lynn Classical High School students.
“Lynners, parents, students, and concerned citizens, thank you for taking the time to show people that you want to live in a peaceful city,” said Mike Curley, a teacher at Classical who helped organize the vigil. “I think we all do.”
Curley said that every faculty and staff member at Classical loves the students like the parents love their children.
“As a group, we wanted to come down here and stand in solidarity with the city, with the students, with the colleagues, with the parents, and with the families we love so much,” Curley said. “This vigil is about one thing: peace.”
Mayor Jared Nicholson offered condolences to the families and everyone else affected by the recent violence.
“I want to acknowledge the grief we all are feeling in the loss,” Nicholson said. “The fear that comes out of these moments of community violence, the anger that this shouldn’t happen. It’s happening too often.”
He called on the community to come together and find hope.
“Whatever little hope we have in one another, we need to add it together,” he said. “We need to find it in one another, then bring it out in one another and build it for the entire city – the hope that there is a future where no young person’s lives are cut short because of community violence. We need to turn that hope into actions.”
He said that the result everyone in the city needs is peace.
“It’s only by coming together in these difficult moments that we build it and make it into reality,” Nicholson said. “We’re going to keep coming together.”
After the mayor’s remarks, the family of Isaiah Acevedo, the 16-year-old who was fatally shot, marched up the sidewalk to the steps of City Hall, holding photos and a banner with his name.
His mother, Jasmine Acevedo, said that both her son and his friend, Kyle Mel, the 19-year-old victim, were “good boys.”
She refuted claims that the boys were involved in any sort of gang activity.
