It was a typical spring evening as the 17-year-old was walking home from his part-time restaurant job in Wilmington.
But something wasn’t right.
Troy Holloway had the sense someone was following him. He had a feeling something not good was about to happen.
About a block or so from his house, the person stopped him and asked for the time. Then he told him to turn around and empty his pockets.
The man had a gun.
Holloway had six bucks and his keys in his pocket and thought the gunman figured he saw his face. He wasn’t going to sit back to wait and see what was next, so he turned around and struck the assailant. The gun went off and Troy took off in the direction of his house.
When he got there, people were helping him. He was shot, bleeding from an open wound at his left collarbone.
“He pulled out the gun,” Holloway said in recalling the attack. “I’m nervous, have no clue. He told me to turn around and face the car. In that split second, all I could think about is he might just shoot me. I just turned around and hit him and when he was falling back, he pulled the trigger. I didn’t feel anything.
“I just wanted to live. I had no clue what he was going to do. I just had to do something.”
He remembers feeling woozy and being loaded into an ambulance. “I started to fade out, heard echoing voices. I remember hearing there was no exit wound. I was in the hospital for five days, missed my senior prom.”
A neighbor who is a firefighter saw the incident unfold and reported that the shooter met up with another man as he was leaving the area, leading investigators to think it might have been a gang initiation incident. No one was ever apprehended in the shooting. The bullet remains lodged inside of Troy.
That was more than 15 years ago. Holloway, 33, is married and the father of two. Being the victim of a crime still has an impact on him. The same is true for his mother, Shirley Gardner. The traumatic crime left her feeling like she could have done something different even though she had been taking classes and wasn’t even home when it happened.
“I began second-guessing myself,” she said.
“We moved here to Wilmington to get away from situations like this, and then this happens. And you ask yourself as a parent, ‘Did I make the right choice?’ If I was there five minutes sooner. The ‘what-ifs’ run through a parents’ mind, but thank God, my son is still here.
“The area we lived in was a good area, but just two or three blocks up, the dynamics changed,” Shirley said.
“That night is something we’ll never forget.”
This is what it is like to be the victim of gun violence in the way so many people have all around the U.S. where guns and those using them upend a peaceful way of life.
People in Delaware — like those in so many places – want to do something to reduce and eliminate gun violence in their communities.
An ecumenical candle-lighting service to remember the victims of gun violence as part of “Peace Week” will be Oct. 11 from 6-8 p.m. at St. Elizabeth Church, 809 S. Broom St., Wilmington.
Anne McWalters of “Moms Demand Action” and Rev. Mark P. Gardner, volunteer services coordinator/chaplain of Ferris School, are among the speakers.
Organizers are hoping for strong community turnout at the event sponsored by the Diocese of Wilmington Ministry for Black Catholics.
Gardner, an ordained Baptist minister, is the keynote speaker at the event. Ferris School is an accredited treatment facility for court-adjudicated boys between the ages of 13-18.
Gardner is Shirley’s husband and Troy’s step-father.
“For me, the focal point is accountability to God, accountability to laws of the land,” Gardner said. “Parents have a responsibility to raise their children, to nurture them.”
He believes each parent is responsible for behavior that places value on life and peace in our communities. He finds no benefit in blaming the place where violence occurs and does not believe people are a product of their environment.
“What I can blame is associations,” he said. “Living in Wilmington is not a problem. It’s some of the people who live in the environment. Living in New York is not a problem. It’s some of the people.
“It’s some of the people who blemish the environment.”
He said keeping young people on the right path starts at home.
“I believe if a man and a woman produce a child, they’re both responsible, and they can’t abdicate that responsibility.”
Holloway believes the same.
“It’s crazy to hear 13-year-olds with a gun,” he said. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It took me a while to walk by myself at home at night. I always check my surroundings, I tell my wife to do that, when you go to Walmart, you never know whose watching.”
Gardner said it’s rooted in a misplaced value system.
“This is happening because young men are seeking affirmation, respect, and a certain image of respect that they’re tough and strong and not to be messed with. When you have children who grow up without a father, he leaves his son open to the influences of others. This is what you do to be accepted.
“There is a whole lot of these young men who are finding their personality, their formation, in gangs and gun usage and crime. As backward as it is, there’s a sense of masculinity. The masculinity of being bad ‘Don’t diss me or I’ll take you out.’ You think that you’re strong, but it’s just that instrument that you’re using.
“An answer is for parents to properly raise, teach, guide, nurture, love and direct their children.”
Of course, parents are not always part of the equation for problem children roaming the streets.
“This is where clergy from respective communities of faith have got to elevate their role in nurturing not only their own membership but have that influence within the community. There’s got to be a renewal on why we say we are what we are.”
“We have got to create better ways of conversation because this social ill is impacting us all.”
Joseph P. Owens is editor and general manager of The Dialog. Email him at jowens@thedialog.org.
