Family mourns man killed in shooting at Natomas sports bar: "He just wanted to dance"
SACRAMENTO -- Nikki Isaac is struggling to understand why her son was killed.
"He wasn't a gangbanger, he was no nothing," she says of her son Nicholas. "He just wanted to dance. Dance the night away and he just bumped into somebody."
A son that was a year sober, celebrating what he overcame with family and friends on a Monday night.
"[He] was genuine," Isaac explains. "We just came out here to [the bar] last night to celebrate his accomplishments. He was celebrating getting a brand new place. Getting a brand new job."
But a Monday night turned tragic after a shooting within the bar. One victim was sent to the hospital where they are now in stable condition. The other was Nikki's son.
"We've had some violence issues in the city this year," says Sacramento Police Department Sergeant Zach Eaton.
Law enforcement doesn't currently have any suspects but has launched an investigation that will include looking at security tapes and gathering witness statements.
A large group of eyewitnesses stayed to talk with the police in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
It's a pain Anita Razo understands. Her son, Giovanni "DJ Gio" Pizarro, was killed in a homicide in Natomas earlier this year. She used to bring her kids to the bar where Tuesday morning's shooting occurred.
"Things are drastically getting worse and worse and worse," Razo says of the area. "This bar here, this is where my kids used to come and drinks and hors d'oeuvres and happy hours."
Berry Accius, the founder of the community group Voice of the Youth, huddled with family members and talked with residents in the morning. He tells CBS13 that individual accountability and reflection within the community is required in a situation like this. If the long-term fix is reaching kids and teenagers at a younger age to get them on the right path, there has to be a reflective approach in order to try and love the short-term problems.
"This is the end result of when you don't have programming and they get older," Accius says. "You have broken children that become broken adults and they think that violence is the only way."
While Isaac and Razo talked in a parking lot on El Camino Avenue, hoping for justice and some measure of peace in the wake of another son's passing.
"It was senseless what happened to him," Isaac says. "He didn't deserve that. He didn't deserve that at all."
"People are getting killed for ridiculous things," Razo concludes. "It's too easy for these criminals to just pull out a gun and shoot somebody and we need to make it stop."