Gun violence forces Oakland youth football team to look for new field to play on
The East Bay Panthers youth football team from Oakland is looking for another place to play and practice after gun violence at its home venue.
There have been two shootings in one week in and around Verdese Carter Park on 96th and Bancroft Avenues in East Oakland. Both happened around the same time in the evening when kids with the East Bay Panthers Football team were practicing.
"Too many to count," said parent Chad Provost of the gunshots. "That's what caught my attention because it was a series of just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop."
Provost was sitting in his car, waiting for his 13-year-old son Carter to finish practice on August 24 around 7:30 p.m. He said the park was full of people, including kids playing basketball and others practicing for a quinceañera.
"The coaches and some parents that were in the park literally got all the kids to kind of get down," Provost said. "Extremely frustrated; my son, I know he's affected, he's a little bit different."
Provost said his son feels anxious and nervous about ever returning to Verdese Carter Park.
Oakland Police said while they found evidence of a shooting on the 1900 block of 96th Avenue, they didn't find any victims.
On August 29, coach and athletic director Leroy Jones said he told kids to get down on the ground as more than 100 gunshots rang out at the park. Police said several homes and cars were hit by gunfire just after 6:30 p.m. on the 2000 block of 96th Avenue.
"It was horrible, people with masks came up on the park, and another group of people, adults, came on motorcycles, and started shooting up the park," said Jones.
Luckily, no one was injured in the shooting. Still, the team and parents were so terrified that this past weekend, the East Bay Panthers were bused to play at Santa Rosa's Newman High School for what would have been a home game, more than an hour away.
"I know a lot of our kids are traumatized, they're PTSD, a lot of them are losing sleep," said Jones. "The parents are terrified to even drop their kids off at practice."
Jones said he wants police to increase patrols in the area during practice, which they hold three times a week.
"I do feel that the Oakland Police Department has not done anything to secure these kids' safety, for these kids to have a place to practice," said Jones. "What we offer is getting the kids off the streets, so they don't turn into these people that are shooting."
Provost, an East Oakland native, knows crime in the area has gotten worse.
"For someone that's born and raised here, you can tell it's worse," said Provost. "I mean I don't even allow my children to walk to a grocery store that's near us. When I was growing up, I would walk to a corner store that was in our neighborhood all the time."
The team said it has been reaching out to other cities and teams in neighboring cities to use their fields, but they've had no luck so far.