‘We need help.’ Columbus Little League fears losing support after city park shooting
One thought crossed Chris Smith’s mind as he ran for his life through Shirley B. Winston Park.
He heard more than pistol fire in the parking lot behind him.
The retired Army staff sergeant who saw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan thought he heard a rifle or shotgun, as he and others ran toward a treeline at the Columbus rec center. Police later told him they found shotgun shells and rifle casings when they responded to the frantic 911 calls, Smith said.
That was on May 30, when the Sally Little League president had just parked at the east Columbus park, where a swarm of teens and young adults was having a water balloon and water gun battle in the parking lot.
That harmless conflict wasn’t a problem, he said.
“They’re not bothering anybody. That’s not a big deal,” he thought at the time. He knows neighborhood youth need a place to play: “The kids, they just have nowhere to go.”.
With his league’s all-star baseball teams practicing on the park fields, about 100 people were there when the gunfire erupted, he said, and many panicked, yelling as they ran for cover.
“It was mass chaos,” he said.
Parents back out
Smith’s league lost support after the park shooting that police said wounded a 16-year-old in the right calf. The boy went to the hospital by private vehicle, to be treated and released, according to a police report that said the gunfire was called in at 6:34 p.m. No suspects have been arrested.
“I’ve had four families for sure say they wouldn’t be back because of that incident,” Smith told the Ledger-Enquirer.
Salathiel Long, a parent and league board member, said so many players dropped out of a junior-senior softball team for girls 13-16 that it couldn’t go to a tournament: “With the shooting, we didn’t have enough girls.”
The day after that melee, Smith went to a public forum hosted by Mayor Skip Henderson, his voice breaking as he recounted the gunfire and pleaded for aid: “I need help to keep my kids safe,” he told Henderson.
The league serves about 150 kids ages 3 through 16, offering T-ball, baseball and softball.
Smith feared losing Little League families could escalate into a spiral of decline, because sports teams based in city parks help support the facilities’ upkeep, reporting problems and advocating for improvements.
The shooting was not the first affray to alarm park users.
Around 2 p.m. on March 26, a Sunday when Little League teams were practicing, some vehicles abruptly pulled up in the lot, and the occupants poured out to brawl.
Long witnessed the skirmish that she said involved multiple youths fist fighting and cursing. It lasted only minutes before they got back in their vehicles and fled, she said.
“They pulled up really fast. It was like two or three minutes,” she recalled.
Three police cars were there three minutes later, she said, but the combatants were gone.
That incident prompted an April 12 meeting at the park, where Long and other parents shared their worries with District 4 Assistant Police Chief Debra Kennedy, Deputy Police Chief Clyde Dent and Councilor Toyia Tucker, who represents the neighborhood.
Smith later said he didn’t think authorities took the March brawl seriously.
But the shooting got everyone’s attention, he said.
The response
Among those hearing Smith’s appeals at the mayor’s May 31 public forum was interim Police Chief Stoney Mathis, who promised to act.
“The only way to put a stop to that is heavy enforcement,” he said of the gun violence.
Park users have been noticing more police patrols since. Smith recalled looking up at the lot one day and seeing 15 to 20 marked cars, so many officers that he feared another crime had occurred.
Mathis said police have been using all-terrain vehicles to patrol the parks, to reach remote areas and secluded access points.
“I think some of the areas where they get in there, it’s just the easy access,” he said. “There’s multiple different areas, so it’s just tough for us to police the whole thing, but we’re doing that both with ATVs mostly, and then extra directed patrols.”
Named for a Columbus police officer killed in the line of duty in 1990, the park at 5025 Steam Mill Road is near the city’s eastern border with Fort Moore. It’s home to what the city calls a “supercenter,” a 19,000-square-foot rec center with a gym, meeting room and game room.
The park also has three baseball fields, a softball field and a football field.
It no longer has a pool, though Tucker said a new one is planned. While voicing their concerns about safety, parents complained about that, too, and the sense that the park doesn’t get the same attention as others in the city.
“We’re just underserved,” one woman said at the park’s April gathering. “It’s like, really, people are not concerned about this community. It’s a lot of talk, and that’s all it is. We’re underserved because this community is majority Black. We are very underserved, and you all know that.”
In an interview last week, Mayor Henderson said the park’s not the only supercenter without a pool now, thanks to maintenance issues.
“The Psalmond Road pool’s out too,” he said of that rec center in midland. “The only pools that really are working I think are Double Churches and the natatorium, and that’s not by design. Double Churches is the only one that didn’t fail.”
Double Churches is on the city’s north side, and the natatorium’s in midtown.
Henderson said the city hasn’t shorted parks in south Columbus to divert resources to others: “I can’t remember a time when we have denied any of our rec centers resources that we have funneled somewhere else.”
The city has plans for park improvements, funded by special purpose local sales tax revenue, he said. “We’ve got some SPLOST money going into parks and rec, that’s going to go toward trying to fix up some of those areas,” he said. “The pools, they should be starting on those this year, and they’ll be ready to get in next year.”
Looking ahead
Henderson said local law enforcement agencies now are coordinating on park security, so that task doesn’t fall solely on the police force. Mathis last week said police still are short 143 officers out of 488 budgeted.
“We have worked out an option which would utilize all law enforcement personnel, to include the correctional officers,” Henderson said of Muscogee County Prison staff. The Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office, which also has ATVs, is joining in, he said.
No fights or shootings at Shirley Winston have been reported since May, said Mathis, who has maintained the extra patrols.
“We’re going to continue to do this, for at least the duration of the summer, because that’s typically when the parks get full,” he said last week.
Smith said he and others in his league appreciate that: “We’ve seen the detail pick up more since the shooting.... That made us feel a lot better,” he said, of the gunfire adding, “but it’s still on their minds.”
Long, a mother of five, no longer lets her kids play outside during league board meetings there. “I don’t feel that comfortable anymore,” she said.
But she hopes the park can rebound. She said Friday that the league may host a more organized water balloon fight in August, when teens are returning to school. “We’re trying to rebrand the park,” she said.
The young people who came only to play there on May 30 will be invited back, she said: “The teens weren’t bad. They feared for their lives. They were fleeing.”
Smith said he feels some teens today get firearms too easily, and are too quick to use them: “Kids these days, they just don’t have a regard for life.”
He worries that eventually all the law enforcement attention will dwindle, but the danger will not, and the park will suffer.
“We need help,” he said.
This story was originally published July 10, 2023 at 5:00 AM.