BY VIVIENNE AGUILAR

CV Journalism Collaborative

There are still more questions than answers surrounding the mass shooting at a child’s birthday party in Stockton over Thanksgiving weekend, and the grief is palpable across the region.

When it came to light last week that one of the four victims killed in the massacre was Amari Peterson, a 14-year-old basketball and football player and student in Modesto, the community rallied behind his family and began gathering resources and planning memorials to process the tragedy.

The brazen shooting, which so far has resulted in no arrests, also injured 13 people. Mental health experts say creating spaces for grief at group, family and personal levels are absolutely necessary to process the trauma experienced by the entire community.

“Something good has to come out of this,” said Michael Estrada, director of the Central Valley Hornets League, a youth basketball organization based in Salida.

Estrada said Amari and his siblings had been with the league for years, and there was no doubt that Amari would have continued on to a junior varsity or varsity team as he entered high school next year.

Worn down by a flood of calls from media outlets he didn’t recognize, Estrada is redirecting his energy into planning fundraisers for the Petersons. He said the CV Hornets plan to host annual basketball fundraising tournaments in Amari’s name to remember him.

“Whatever the family wants to do with those funds is up to them,” he told The Modesto Focus. “If they want to create a scholarship for kids in the community or donate it to gun violence prevention groups, they can decide.”

The Petersons are also heavily involved in the local football community. Amari recently played on the Central Saints Youth Football team. Before that, he played both offensive and defensive positions during his time with the Ceres Junior Bulldogs.

Joe Estrada, president of Ceres Jr. Bulldogs Football and Cheer, said he has been in constant contact with the Petersons since the news broke. Last Saturday, for the City of Ceres Christmas Tree Lane Parade, the family and members of the Bulldog community decorated the group’s float as a memorial to Amari.

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“Down at the parade, so many people were yelling for Amari, ‘Justice for Amari.’ There’s just so much community support for the whole thing. We don’t want to see any more gun violence,” Estrada said.

Gun violence from a  public health standpoint

Experts describe the mass shooting as community trauma that will require several steps to process grief and create gun violence prevention plans.

Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency medicine physician at UC Davis Medical Center, researcher on violence and director of the Centers for Violence Prevention at UC Davis, said he is always available for local groups seeking advice and resources on how to start.

“It’s really important to allow space for the grief, because Modesto has lost a loved one and needs to process that, but oftentimes beginning right from the day it happens, people are wondering, ‘How can we transmute this into something good? How can we honor her memory in a way that brings benefit to the community?’” he said.

Depending on the kind of organization reaching out, Wintemute can provide connections to groups in the region working on violence prevention and education for health care professionals through the Bullet Points Project.

Due to the nature and rumors about possible gang connections to the tragedy, some facts may stir up anticipatory grief within the community. Wintemute said it’s important to take note of the survivor’s guilt and fear resulting from the crime.

“In this context, the term survivor doesn’t mean shot and not killed,” he said. “It means touched by violence. So it can be somebody who saw a scary video.”

In his work, he’s seen how anticipatory grief, or distress felt from an expected loss, is another issue to look out for, as it can negatively impact our health.

“The key to dealing with anticipatory grief is knowing that it’s coming and knowing how it can manifest itself, knowing about the physical manifestations of grief, that chest pain can be grief, shortness of breath can be grief… as an ER doc, this past weekend, I probably saw half a dozen young children with chest pain,” he said. “It’s a real thing.”

Fear as a result of the tragedy is another factor with toxic effects. He is concerned that this moment will lead to people making the decision to purchase a firearm out of fear of safety for themselves, their family and especially children. 

“The tragedy, the ironic tragedy, is that tragedy number one, the death that we’re talking about, leads to decisions to purchase firearms,” he said.

He said all the data makes these thoughts completely understandable, but following through can actually put the community more at risk.

In California, he said, bringing a gun into a home where there are no guns at least doubles the rate of homicide and suicide in that home. For some people, it can triple it. For women, the rate goes up by a factor of more than 30 times the rate.

In Stanislaus County, gun shows, ranges and sports are common. He said, if folks who are familiar with firearms likely have precautions in place in the home and pose less of a risk in this regard.

“The problem is with guns that are purchased for protection, which is what we’re talking about here. If I want a gun for protection, and I’m anticipating using it that way, then it’s got to be available to me in three seconds, at three in the morning when I hear a stranger’s footsteps in the hallway. And it’s that ease of access, that time and time and time again is associated with tragedy,” he said.

Free, local trauma and grief resources are available

Modesto City Schools released a statement following the news of Amari’s death. According to the Ceres Courier, he was a student at Prescott Junior High in the Stanislaus Union School District. 

Should any MCS students feel the need to talk with a counselor about the massacre, all 34 schools within Modesto City Schools “have a true mental health clinician on site between three to five days per week”, spokeswoman Sharokina Shams wrote in an email. 

Jessica’s House, a nonprofit that provides free grief support for children, teens and young adults and their families is another resource. 

The organization, opened in Modesto in 2012, runs multiple support groups and anyone can use their services. It is not income or residency restricted. 

Jessica’s House Executive Director Erin Nelson said adults and children can benefit from additional support after a community experiences trauma like this.

Adults should not try to shoulder a tragedy like this alone, Nelson said. 

In order to properly support their children, it is important to lean on friends and family, be honest about any anxieties they’re having about similar situations and do anything to create predictability and safety in your day.

“We can’t always guarantee them that nothing bad will happen, but we can always reassure them that these types of events are relatively rare,” she said. “The best thing we can do for children is to really assure them, just reassure them with our own physical presence as parents and the adults in their lives.”

This way, the adults will be able to talk with their child about their worries in age-appropriate ways.

“A lot of times, children will really lead the adult in what they need to hear. And so it’s really asking, responding to the questions that they’re asking, but not going beyond that,” Nelson said. 

“We have many resources on our website for how to talk to children about death and I think for adults too, being able to just model just healthy coping and being available and also validating their feelings that you felt sad too.”

Some of the groups Jessica’s House holds for free cover the death of a parent or sibling hope after suicide and more. These support groups are held every other week in Turlock.

Right now, Nelson said taking part in community ceremonies, like the one in Ceres planned for Tuesday, Dec. 9, are a big part of the healing process.

At 5:30 p.m. the Bulldog league will host a candlelight vigil in Whitmore Park next to the Ceres Police Department to continue to mourn as a community and show support for the family.

“It’s a sad moment but at the same time this is our calling,” Estrada said.

Joe Estrada said his team has been going around to grocery stores gathering cookies and other donations to pass out to the crowd for the vigil. He advises people to dress warm and bring chairs if they need to sit. They are also welcome to bring more candles.  

The Peterson family is expected to join and the service will close out with everyone singing Michael Jackson’s “We Are The World”.

“We’re just here to help the family grieve,” he said. “This is hard, we’ve never done this for a child. But we can pray with the family. Having to put this together during the holiday season is so hard to deal with. We cry almost every night. We just want to say our prayers with the family and bring our community together.”

— The Modesto Focus Editor Marijke Rowland contributed to this report. Vivienne Aguilar is a reporter for The Modesto Focus, a project of the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. Contact Aguilar at vivienne@cvlocaljournalism.org.