The room fell quiet before the first speaker even reached the microphone. People had come carrying grief, frustration, and a kind of exhaustion that sits heavy on a community.
Durham’s first-ever Gun Violence Reduction Summit wasn’t just a meeting. It felt like a reckoning.
Cornwallis Road resident Tanya Kelley stood up, her voice steady but full of hurt. She talked about the children in her neighborhood growing up learning to navigate poverty, trauma, and the constant threat of gunfire…