How are the Children? The Children are not Well

The Stolen Generation: Answering the Question, 'How Are the Children?' in Newark and Essex County

The question is ancient, a cultural cornerstone of the African Maasai people: "Kasserian Ingera?" And how are the children? It is not a casual inquiry into health, but a profound measure of a society's well-being. The expected response, the one that signals a world in balance, is a simple, sacred affirmation: “All the children are well.”

In Newark, New Jersey, and across the scarred towns of Essex County— particularly East Orange and Irvington—that question hangs in the air like smoke. The answer, if it can be spoken at all, is a devastating silence. The children are not well. They are a generation growing up in the shadow of gunfire, their childhoods measured not in milestones, but in the grim statistics of shootings and homicides, their value appraised by the ten-thousand-dollar reward signs plastered on utility poles. The peace and prosperity the Maasai greeting signifies have been replaced by a deafening, heartbreaking silence.

This crisis is not an abstract policy debate; it is a ledger of names, ages, and stolen moments that demand to be read.

A narrative timeline of youth taken by gunfire across Essex County

The story of the violence is often told through the eyes of the youngest victims, whose deaths shatter the illusion of safety. They are falling to bullets in their grandmothers' homes, on their front porches, and even pulled from their mothers' arms.

It begins in September 2013, when 16-year-old NaQuese McCollum, an Irvington high school junior with a shy smile and a gift for math, was sitting in a car with her cousin on a Newark street. A drive-by. The investigators would later say she was simply “in the wrong place at the wrong time”—the phrase that will become a curse in our city, a refrain whispered at living-room repasts and sidewalk vigils for the next decade.

The following summer, in late June 2014, 17-year-old Cheyanne Bond—a promising dancer—was shot and killed in Newark. Her murder, like so many others, would fade from the headlines long before the grief faded from her mother’s face.

The killings continued. In November 2014, two young men, ages twenty and twenty-one, were gunned down in Irvington on an ordinary Saturday. Then on a Sunday night in June 2015, 21-year-old Sean Meadows was shot dead in the same town—another Black boy from Essex County quietly folded into the morgue’s statistics.

In January 2016, 20-year-old Rakim S. Onque was shot near Riverview Court in Newark’s East Ward. It was two o’clock in the afternoon—a time when children should be walking home with backpacks, not stepping over caution tape.

That same year, in September 2016, 15-year-old Hanayah Woods was shot late one Saturday night in Newark. She died shortly after at University Hospital. She was still wearing her school jewelry.

And then came the spring of 2017, when 17-year-old Kamara Ingram of Irvington, sitting on a porch during a visit to Newark, was suddenly struck by gunfire. A teenager on a porch. A girl doing nothing more dangerous than existing.

By March 2019, when 18-year-old Marquise Jenkins, an Irvington High School student, was shot just off Clinton Avenue, the pattern was unmistakable: the children were not well, and neither were the places they called home.

In October 2020, 16-year-old Antoine Sanga-Niangara of East Orange was shot and killed on Lincoln Street.

In October 2022, 16-year-old Letrell Duncan, a beloved basketball standout from East Orange Campus High School, was ambushed near an elementary school in broad daylight. Teachers would later recall how children in nearby classrooms hit the floor automatically, instinctively trained by years of exposure to drop before they even processed the sound.

And then came the year of accidents—if a child can ever die by accident in a country flooded with guns.

In August 2021, two Newark boys, both just eight years old, died after finding unsecured firearms. One was Jahmeer Allen, who shot himself at a relative’s home.

Another unnamed eight-year-old boy died the very next day, also in Newark’s South Ward, under nearly identical circumstances.

These are not crimes of intent but crimes of negligence—a society so saturated in weapons that even childhood curiosity becomes fatal.

The murders continued their procession:

• May 2021, 16-year-old Jarrod Lawson, shot and killed on 15th Avenue in Newark.
• June 2021, a local teen known only as “Carlos,” found with multiple gunshot wounds on Seymour Avenue.
• August 2021, 17-year-old Khalif Harrington, a Newark senior, shot near his school and dead by nightfall.
• August 2022, another unnamed 17-year-old boy shot dead on Maple Avenue in Irvington.
• October 2024, a 16-year-old boy gunned down on Lincoln Street in East Orange.
• July 2024, 18-year-old Wed Thalerand, killed on Huntington Terrace in Newark.

Each killing as predictable as the sunrise. Each name entered the local ledger of grief.

And then the tragedies that were almost too hard to process:

In March 2019, the disappearance and murder of 15-year-old Mawa Doumbia—kidnapped, killed, and hidden by a serial predator whose crimes shattered families from Orange to Newark. Her face remained on missing posters long after the detectives had found her body.

In May 2023, the killing of 8-year-old Zahmire Lopez—pulled from his mother’s arms by a gunman inside an apartment. There are no metaphors sufficient for this kind of violence. The home itself—our last sacred refuge—was invaded.

In June 2025, 16-year-old Ziyad Cook, a scholar-athlete from Irvington High School, was shot while riding in a car near Brookdale Avenue. His teammates wept openly at graduation; his jersey remains unretired because his coaches cannot bear the finality.

In February 2025, 8-year-old Yasin Morrison was visiting his grandmother on Osborne Terrace. A small boy with weekend plans, caught in crossfire that had nothing to do with him. The city put up a $10,000 reward. As if ten thousand dollars could balance the ledger of a life not lived.

And finally—though the timeline never really ends—November 15, 2025, the South Ward mass shooting.

Ten-year-old Jordan Garcia, twenty-one-year-old Kiyah Mae Scott, and, days later, 19-year-old Masi Rogers, who died from his injuries.

A boy, a young woman, and a teenager—erased in a single sweep of violence.

In just over Twelve years, dozens of children and young adults were heartbreakingly stripped of their lives. Yet, for all of these, there are dozens more unlisted, unnamed, forgotten by the public but carried forever by the families.

The Systemic Failure: The Indictment

The Maasai greeting is not merely a question—it is a demand. It asks: Have we maintained the conditions necessary for our children to flourish? Have we created a world where they can grow, learn, dream, and thrive without fear? Have we fulfilled our most sacred obligation?

In Newark, in East Orange, in Irvington, across all of Essex County, the answer is a silence so profound it echoes. The children are dying at a rate that would trigger federal emergency declarations if the victims lived in suburbs, or if their deaths disrupted commerce or tourism. They are dying in crossfires and targeted shootings, from stray bullets and domestic accidents, in homes and on street corners and outside schools. Their potential is buried in child-sized caskets. Their innocence is shattered by the age of ten. Their collective trauma will echo through generations.

The children are not well, and the adults who were supposed to protect them—the policymakers and police chiefs, the mayors and governors, the citizens who vote and the citizens who look away—have failed them with stunning, systematic consistency.

There is no single villain in this story. There is instead a web of failures: guns that flow across state lines with impunity, an economic system that has abandoned entire communities, a criminal justice approach that prioritizes punishment over prevention, a social safety net shredded by decades of disinvestment, a national culture that has normalized the presence of weapons designed for warfare in civilian spaces, and a collective unwillingness to prioritize the lives of Black and brown children the way we would prioritize the lives of children who look like the people making policy decisions.

The truth is known. The teachers know it. The trauma surgeons know it. The community organizers know it. The mothers who have buried their children know it. Everyone knows it except, apparently, the people with the power to change it.

The Maasai question is a mirror. It reflects what we have become, what we have allowed ourselves to become. And right now, the reflection is unbearable.

The Only Answer That Matters

The only question that matters now is this: What are we doing today that makes the children safer?

Not policy debates or partisan arguments. Not tough-on-crime rhetoric or abstract discussions about root causes. The only question is: What concrete action are we taking today that will prevent another eight-year-old from being shot in front of his grandmother's home? What are we doing today that will allow a sixteen-year-old athlete to dream of college without wondering if he'll live to see graduation? What are we doing today to ensure that children can walk to school, sit on their porches, visit their families without calculating which route is safest?

Until we can answer that question with something more substantial than thoughts and prayers and reward posters, until we can answer it with genuine structural change—with funded programs and sealed gun pipelines and economic investment and mental health services and accountability for the policies that created this crisis—then “Kasserian Ingera?” will remain a question we cannot answer honestly.

The children are not well. And until they are, neither are we.