TULSA, Okla. — This past year, Sandra Goff has had many “firsts”.
She’s celebrated her first Thanksgiving, Christmas, and youngest son’s birthday without him.
Sept. 30 will be one year since her son was shot and killed at the Echo Trails apartments.
It was a senseless act of gun violence that still, to this day, she and the police don’t know why it happened.
But she says teen gun violence in the area is an issue that must be addressed before another mother loses their child.
“As a mother, I don’t think we ever have the peace we need when we lose a loved one,” says Goff. “When we lose a child.”
Last September, Goff says her son was at the Echo Trail apartments when two boys approached him and his friends, and the suspect asked Fedro a question.
“And from that response, he was shot,” says Goff. “The young man stated he didn’t know my son.”
A teenager with his whole life ahead of him — killed by teen gun violence.
An issue Sandra says that needs to be addressed and stopped.
“We have to do something. Not for my son, for the next son, for the next daughter,” says Goff. “I can’t bring my son back. My fight isn’t to bring him back. My fight is to keep it from happening to someone else. Keep it from happening to someone else’s child.”
She says it’s up to parents and adults in the community to be the first barrier when it comes to teens getting their hands on guns.
Sandra says it could take just one conversation with a teen about gun violence to potentially save a life.
She also says losing her son to gun violence is a loss no one can ever truly recover from, but his memory will live on.
“Death took him away from us,” says Goff. “Although the anger that young man carried in his heart for him, although that took him away from us, he still lives.”
“And I know one day I will see him again.”
Kaleb Pelton has been charged with first-degree murder.
His next court date is Sept. 19.
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