JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Simply west of the St. Johns River, which divides this sprawling metropolis racially and economically, 2-year-old A’mahri Robinson was murdered in his mom’s arms.
Ladonna Johnson was rocking A’mahri to sleep in March when he was shot within the head with a gun she saved for cover.
A’mahri liked going outside and taking rides in his pull-along wagon. His mom referred to as the toddler “candy” and “affectionate.” When he was round, she mentioned, “you simply felt love.”
The kid was shut with Steven Dodson Jr., his mom’s boyfriend, who had reached for the gun throughout an argument. Dodson, 21, in June pleaded guilty to homicide and aggravated baby abuse and was sentenced to life in jail.
A’mahri died in certainly one of Florida’s most violent locations for kids: Jacksonville. This metropolis has three ZIP codes that rank among the many 10 worst within the state for firearm accidents involving youngsters.
Yearly, lots of of kids are hospitalized in Florida with gunshot wounds, and overwhelmingly, they arrive from a tiny variety of ZIP codes, an unique evaluation of hospital knowledge by KFF Well being Information and The Hint discovered.
Hospital billing knowledge obtained from the Florida Company for Well being Care Administration reveals that from 2018 to 2024 greater than 4,000 youngsters 17 or youthful have been hospitalized for firearm accidents — a charge of about 1.5 a day.
The newsrooms gathered data that the state’s hospitals use to gather funds from insurance coverage corporations or the federal government. The data doesn’t determine sufferers however contains particulars about the place they lived and their age, race, and different demographics.
The variety of youngsters killed in Jacksonville has grown so giant that a nonprofit, Households of Slain Kids, constructed a “Wall of Compassion” memorial itemizing lots of of individuals killed by gunfire within the metropolis. Memorial organizers have stood up a second wall close by that’s filling with names.
The numbers replicate how Florida’s lengthy historical past of racial discrimination and permissive gun legal guidelines undermine public well being, mentioned researchers, public officers, neighborhood activists, and grieving mother and father.
Jacksonville youngsters have been shot most frequently in racially segregated neighborhoods — a legacy from the early twentieth century of state-sanctioned discrimination in housing, banking, and funding. These areas at present are suffering from air pollution from defunct city-run trash incinerators, garbage-strewn tons, dilapidated housing, poverty, and different issues that native leaders have been promising to repair for greater than 50 years.
Almost all of the Florida ZIP codes with the very best charges of firearm accidents for kids have giant Black or Latino populations.
Maybe nowhere is the toll of gun violence extra evident than at UF Well being Jacksonville, a security web hospital and the one Stage I trauma heart in northeastern Florida.
As chief of acute care surgical procedure, Firas Madbak sees firsthand the toll exacted by weapons.
“You see it day in and day trip,” Madbak mentioned. “I’m working tonight, and I think I’ll see a pair victims.”
Jeffrey Goldhagen, a UF Well being pediatrician and former well being director for Duval County, which incorporates Jacksonville, mentioned state and native leaders have failed to deal with what he referred to as the “root causes” of preventable firearm accidents and deaths, reminiscent of poverty, lack of alternative, and neglect.
“The underside line is no person offers a flying f— about these younger males,” Goldhagen mentioned.
Gun violence victims and their households face increased risk of despair, nervousness, post-traumatic stress dysfunction, and different psychological well being issues.
All through U.S. historical past, native governments have pushed industrial vegetation, oil refineries, and highways by means of Black neighborhoods whilst research linked them to elevated dangers of cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, most cancers, preterm births, and gun violence.
However the Florida Division of Well being doesn’t concentrate on gun violence as a public well being menace, Goldhagen mentioned, regardless of its being the nation’s leading cause of death for kids and teenagers.
The State Health Improvement Plan, a set of targets developed by the well being division and an advisory committee, doesn’t point out weapons, the toll they tackle youngsters, or efforts to scale back firearm deaths and accidents to younger folks.
As a substitute, its targets embody stopping or decreasing sudden sudden toddler deaths and youth drownings, emergency room visits for motorized vehicle crashes, and hospitalizations for traumatic mind accidents.
And but, nobody with the authority to deal with this public well being disaster would agree to speak to KFF Well being Information about gun violence and its toll on Jacksonville’s youngsters — not the Florida well being division, Gov. Ron DeSantis, Mayor Donna Deegan, or 18 of 19 members of the Jacksonville Metropolis Council.
Solely Council member Jimmy Peluso responded. Peluso mentioned town has lengthy ignored the wants of neighborhoods with excessive charges of firearm accidents amongst youngsters.
“Quite a lot of these neighborhoods have simply felt just like the wealth has left them,” he mentioned, “and town didn’t are available in to place within the quantity of labor they wanted to.”
DeSantis, a Republican, in public feedback has referred to as for few limits on how folks buy or carry firearms. He signed a bill to permit Floridians to hold hid weapons with out a allow.
When then-U.S. Surgeon Normal Vivek Murthy declared firearm violence a public well being disaster in 2024, DeSantis referred to as the advisory an “unconstitutional power-grab.”
DeSantis mentioned Florida wouldn’t comply with the advisory, which really useful insurance policies together with common background checks for gun purchases and necessities for safe storage.
DeSantis spokesperson Molly Greatest declined an interview request and to reply questions concerning the governor’s gun insurance policies.
“There isn’t an agenda to finish gun violence within the state of Florida,” mentioned Jean Francis, a former pediatric nurse who leads the Jacksonville chapter of Mothers Demand Motion, a part of a nonprofit that advocates for stronger firearm legal guidelines.
Analysis has linked will increase in pediatric gun deaths from 2011 to 2023 to state-level gun insurance policies.
States with permissive gun insurance policies, reminiscent of “stand your floor” and open carry legal guidelines, reported greater charges of firearm deaths amongst youngsters than states with strict laws, reminiscent of weapon and age restrictions, in response to a study in JAMA Pediatrics.
The research ranked Florida amongst a bunch of 30 states with essentially the most permissive gun insurance policies. 4 states with comparatively strict gun legal guidelines — California, Maryland, New York, and Rhode Island — noticed a lower in pediatric gun deaths over the identical time interval.
Florida law prevents cities and counties from enacting stricter gun security measures.
Research shows youngsters in deprived neighborhoods are as much as 20 instances extra more likely to endure firearm accidents than their friends in essentially the most advantaged areas.
“It’s disheartening,” Madbak mentioned. UF Well being Jacksonville handled 255 sufferers for gunshot wounds in 2024, together with 32 who have been 17 or youthful, he mentioned.
In 2025, the hospital handled 269 sufferers for firearm accidents, together with 22 who have been below 18, in response to Dan Leveton, a hospital spokesperson. As of Aug. 19, the hospital has handled 137 sufferers for gunshot wounds this yr, together with 18 who have been 17 or youthful.
Stopping gun violence “shouldn’t be a political problem, regardless that it’s,” Madbak mentioned, including that there’s a lot of room for simpler advocacy for violence prevention.
“It’s actually an American problem,” Madbak mentioned, “and our state has been impacted tremendously by this type of violence.”
The Ache of Moms, Grandmothers, and Aunts
In Orlando, one ZIP code — 32805 — had the state’s highest charge of kids below 18 hospitalized for a gunshot wound from 2018 by means of 2024, with a complete of 25 youngsters, or 125.8 per 100,000.
On New Yr’s Day 2018, Bryce Williams, 17, was shot in a neighborhood park in Casselberry, an Orlando suburb. He was discovered useless after crashing his blue Kia into a house close to the park.
Williams’ loss of life devastated his household, his grandmother Kim Crow instructed WFTV in Orlando.
“First off, you’ll be able to’t consider that somebody is taken from you so violently,” Crow mentioned. “It’s heartbreaking.”
In April, Daesean Moctezuma Orland, 18, was fatally shot whereas attending a home social gathering outdoors Orlando. Two others wounded within the capturing have been taken to the hospital. Police arrested a 16-year-old boy a few month after the capturing and charged him with Moctezuma Orland’s loss of life.
Moctezuma Orland’s grandmother Iveliz Moctezuma instructed WFTV {that a} pal of her grandson’s referred to as her and daughter Noemi Moctezuma to inform them that he had been shot. The ladies drove to 4 hospitals, together with one in Tampa, trying to find him.
“My on daily basis is crumbled,” Iveliz Moctezuma mentioned. “It’s laborious to work. You sit there and also you watch the information. You’re like, oh my God, there goes one other child getting killed by gun violence.”
“It’s a gap in my chest, a gap in my thoughts,” Noemi Moctezuma mentioned. “It’s like the most important void that you possibly can ever probably think about, that not even the happiest moments can fill a void like that.”
Jacksonville, a metropolis of about 1 million, is especially treacherous for kids dwelling in areas north and west of downtown.
The victims embody a 7-year-old boy gunned down whereas taking part in in entrance of a home, a 13-year-old boy fatally wounded coming house from a soccer tryout, and a 5-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet as she sat in a parked automobile.
Advocates for victims mentioned that gun violence has ripped any sense of normalcy from households and whole neighborhoods. Grieving moms worry fireworks and different loud noises that sound like gunshots. Grappling with their very own feelings, they mentioned, they generally battle to assist their surviving youngsters deal with the loss.
“Whenever you hear their tales, you suppose, ‘That is the worst factor I’ve ever heard,’” Francis mentioned, “till you hear the following one.”
Hours after graduating from Jacksonville’s Raines Excessive Faculty in Might 2022, Rashaud Fields, 18, was shot and killed whereas arriving at a pal’s celebration. Fields was strolling into the social gathering when a automobile pulled up and opened fireplace, his mom, Yvonne Fields, instructed Motion Information Jax in an interview.
A defensive lineman on his highschool soccer group, Fields had been provided a full scholarship to play for Keiser College in West Palm Seaside. His mother and father have been planning a celebration for the next day to have a good time his commencement.
“Everyone liked him,” Yvonne Fields mentioned of her youngest son, calling him “the lifetime of the social gathering.”
“Rashaud liked to bop. He was a joke teller. He was humorous,” Fields mentioned.
On the time, Rashaud Fields was not less than the ninth 17- to 19-year-old murder sufferer within the metropolis that yr, in response to the Florida Times-Union, the native newspaper. Yvonne Fields mentioned she has saved her son’s room precisely as he left it the day he was killed. She smells his shirt on daily basis.
“I do know he’s not coming again,” she mentioned, “however I can really feel the spirit.”
Two days after celebrating his 18th birthday, Maurice Hobbs was fatally shot in January 2017 as he waited for his mom to choose him up.
“I used to be not even a block away,” Latasha Hobbs mentioned to Motion Information Jax.
A singer, rapper, and poet, Maurice Hobbs wished to carry out and launch a clothes line. He dreamt of creating sufficient cash to present properties to everybody in his household so they might all dwell on the identical avenue.
His mother recalled celebrating his birthday with cake and dancing within the kitchen and his response to turning 18.
“He was like, ‘Oh my God, Mother, I made it to 18,’” Latasha Hobbs mentioned. “So it’s laborious to swallow realizing that my child didn’t make it to 19. It’s not truthful. My child deserves to be right here.”
Pamela Howard has struggled for practically twenty years with the ache of the killing of her son Derrell Baker at age 17.
Howard, a mom of 5, referred to as her son energetic and an anchor for his youthful siblings. Baker excelled at soccer, she mentioned, and was on monitor to graduate highschool regardless of having extreme attention-deficit/hyperactivity dysfunction.
Somebody shot Baker in September 2008 as he walked to highschool. A passerby discovered him by the street.
Howard mentioned she thought Baker was in school and later soccer follow. The household discovered one thing is perhaps mistaken solely when a sibling heard that Baker had been shot.
Howard referred to as space hospitals in the hunt for her son. By the point she discovered him at UF Well being Jacksonville, it was too late, she mentioned: He had died hours earlier.
“I don’t bear in mind something after they instructed me” he was useless, Howard mentioned. “My associates say they simply heard me scream.”
For the moms Fields, Hobbs, and Howard, the sudden, sudden loss of life of their youngsters lower deep. The dearth of closure is painful. Police haven’t made an arrest in any of the circumstances.
“After I get justice,” Yvonne Fields mentioned, “possibly I’ll be a bit of at peace.”
(WFTV)
Main Explanation for Loss of life
Michael Nance, chief of pediatric surgical procedure and trauma at Kids’s Hospital of Philadelphia, mentioned there needs to be an urge for food in state capitals to control firearms and shield youngsters from gun violence.
Nance co-authored a research letter in JAMA Pediatrics discovering that the variety of states the place weapons have been the main reason for loss of life for kids and teenagers elevated from zero over the interval 2004 to 2008 to 24 from 2019 to 2023.
Motorized vehicle deaths amongst youngsters, as soon as the main reason for loss of life in that group, have declined primarily due to security interventions undertaken by governments and automobile producers, he mentioned, from seat belt legal guidelines and pace limits to air luggage and antilock brakes.
“That progress has been fairly common throughout the U.S.,” he mentioned, “however firearm stuff is simply everywhere in the map.”
Weapons don’t have federal security requirements, Nance famous. They aren’t regulated by the Client Product Security Fee, a federal company that protects the general public from harmful merchandise, they usually can’t be recalled the way in which unsafe toys or vehicles could be.
“We’ve actually achieved virtually nothing to alter the trajectory of firearm accidents in youngsters,” Nance mentioned.
Goldhagen, the UF Well being pediatrician, mentioned Jacksonville leaders tried to deal with gun violence by means of the Jacksonville Journey, an initiative launched in 2008 — when Duval County was the homicide capital of Florida — below former Mayor John Peyton.
This system for kids prone to violence supplied mentorship, summer season camps, job coaching, and nonpolice methods reminiscent of neighborhood beautification initiatives and neighborhood heart applications. The Journey additionally partnered with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Workplace on gang intervention targeted on younger folks.
Officers credited the hassle with an almost 40% discount in homicides in Duval County in its first 4 years.
After Peyton left workplace in 2011, program spending of about $15 million was slashed to $8.6 million in 2012 and about $2.3 million in 2014. The scaled-back program was finally mixed with one other youngsters’s initiative to kind the Kids Hope Alliance, which makes use of metropolis, state, and federal grants to fund youth providers and intervention applications.
Duval County is the one giant county in Florida that doesn’t have a toddler providers tax devoted to applications for kids, together with efforts to scale back youth crime.
Metropolis leaders consider “public security is about fireplace and police, however not social providers,” mentioned Vicki Waytowich, govt director of the Partnership for Child Health, a nonprofit funded by means of grants and contracts that gives well being and juvenile justice providers for kids and households in Jacksonville.
“There may be completely zero political will to do something that remotely resembles a toddler providers tax,” she mentioned.
In 2024, city leaders halted spending on a gun violence prevention program referred to as Remedy Violence, which tried to squash beefs between youths earlier than they escalated to shootings. A metropolis Workplace of Inspector Normal report alleged the program lacked oversight and sound monetary practices.
“Now we have a public well being system that doesn’t concentrate on this as a public well being or inhabitants well being problem,” Goldhagen mentioned.
Waytowich mentioned crime is a symptom of a lot deeper issues on the north facet of Jacksonville, from neighborhood decay to generational trauma and lack of job alternatives.
“We don’t actually have the funds to deal with the basis causes,” she mentioned. “What we’re doing is slapping a band-aid on issues.”
Not like in Mandarin, a predominantly white neighborhood on the south facet of Jacksonville with easy accessibility to about seven grocery shops, youngsters of town’s north facet have poor diet, Waytowich mentioned, and lots of stroll greater than a mile to get to highschool.
“We are able to see that youngsters don’t have hope,” Waytowich mentioned. “When youngsters consider they’re going to die at 21, then what’s the usage of goal-setting and résumé-building workshops?”
In 2025, Jacksonville Mayor Deegan launched a program to deal with gun violence referred to as Journey Forward.
However like its predecessor, Journey Ahead doesn’t have a devoted, ongoing supply of funding.
Exhausting Reminiscence
On March 22, Ladonna Johnson mentioned, she broke up with Dodson as a result of she noticed that he was sharing location info with different ladies on his cellphone.
She mentioned she went right into a bed room the place A’mahri and his sister have been watching tv and put her son on her lap. Dodson adopted Johnson into the room, she mentioned, then went right into a closet and retrieved the gun.
“He simply saved asking me, ‘What are we doing?’” Johnson mentioned.
Moments later, Johnson mentioned, she heard a loud bang. Her daughter began to cry.
They may each want remedy, she mentioned. She is devoted to preserving A’mahri’s reminiscence: “I need folks to know the way lovely and candy my son was.”
Nonetheless, she mentioned, “I really feel like I’ll by no means be OK.”
Methodology
To search out that greater than 4,000 youngsters below 18 had been handled in Florida hospitals for gunshot wounds from 2018 to 2024, The Hint and KFF Well being Information analyzed two datasets obtained from the Florida Company for Well being Care Administration through a knowledge request:
- Within the emergency division file, which contained data of 67,565,314 ER visits that didn’t end in an inpatient admission, we recognized 37,415 gunshot wound circumstances utilizing the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention’s ICD injury code matrix.
- Within the inpatient file, which contained data of 21,857,664 hospital visits through which sufferers have been admitted, we recognized 28,149 gunshot wound circumstances utilizing the CDC definition.
We outlined youngsters as 17 and below and filtered the affected person age column to seek out that 2,340 youngsters had been handled in ERs and 1,684 admitted to hospitals with gunshot wounds. To keep away from double-counting, we excluded sufferers from the emergency division file whose data indicated that they have been transferred to a distinct inpatient facility.
Demographic breakdowns have been generated utilizing the race and ethnicity columns within the datasets.
To look at the geographic distribution of the burden of gun violence, we grouped baby gunshot wound victims by the ZIP code supplied. Importantly, this ZIP code is the placement not of the capturing however of the kid’s residence. A small variety of youngsters within the knowledge had out-of-state ZIP codes, or placeholder ZIP codes indicating they have been homeless or from a overseas nation. These youngsters are included in statewide totals as youngsters handled in Florida hospitals however not in ZIP-level outcomes.
This knowledge doesn’t embody youngsters who have been shot however died on the scene or earlier than reaching the hospital or who by no means acquired medical therapy.
KFF Well being Information knowledge editor Holly Ok. Hacker contributed to this report.
This report was produced by KFF Well being Information, The Hint, Motion Information Jax in Jacksonville, and WFTV in Orlando.
