Richmond youth cover lives lost in the first months of 2011

Richmond is well known for its violence, as the 6th most dangerous city in America. Richmond Pulse tells the stories of young lives lost from the community's point of view.Tania Pulido describes how turf issues play out in the lives of Richmond's young people. The recent murder of 21-year-old Ervin Coley III makes her recall her first boyfriend, who was from another part of Richmond and couldn't say no to the drama of the streets.In April, Street Soldiers, a weekly call-in radio program on KMEL, interviewed Joe McCoy from the Richmond Office of Neighborhood Safety ("You can’t kill an enemy, Doc. You just make more enemies.") and youth advocate Khalid Elahi ("When my brother got killed.... I was just an ordinary brother running around the streets of Richmond fighting for power, wanting to be the toughest one, when the thought came across my head that I could kill a thousand people and I’m gonna still feel sad.") Read the full transcript of their interview on Richmond Pulse.A Richmond Pulse blogger writes, "Everybody that lives in North Richmond is not a part of the gang activity, but everybody is afraid of the bullet with no name."Daily bus rider D’Vondre Woodards blogs about how he sees fights on the bus all the time, but is shocked when the city's last murder occurred on a bus.The RYSE Center held a memorial for its community to mourn the deaths of two young men: Tyree Brown, who took his own life, and 16-year-old Gene Grisby, Richmond's first murder of 2011.[vimeo http://vimeo.com/20579843 &w=320&h=240]Richmond's first murder of the year killed 16-year-old Gene Grisby. When Sean Shavers interviews students at Grisby's high school, he learns the murder followed a fight with another student. Shavers asks, "When does a fight turn into murder? When and why do we actually cross that line?"[vimeo http://vimeo.com/18787889 &w=320&h=240]