[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 15 (Tuesday, February 22, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 HOMICIDES BY GUNSHOT IN NEW YORK CITY

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to announce that during 
the past 2 weeks, 37 people were killed by gunshot in New York City, 
bringing the 1994 total to 153.
  Recently I received a letter from Frances E. Davis of Brooklyn, NY. 
Ms. Davis lost all three of her children to handgun violence. She asked 
that I continue to press for restrictions on handgun ammunition.
  In her letter, she wrote:

       We can no longer tolerate this destruction of human lives. 
     I have lost all of my children (3 sons) to handguns. I 
     commend you on your suggestion to impose a high tax on 
     bullets. You said that ``guns do not kill people bullets 
     do.'' You are absolutely correct. A gun is useless without 
     bullets.
       We have to start putting human life before profits. Once a 
     bullet kills someone no amount of money will ever bring them 
     back. The NRA argues that the answer to crime and violence is 
     not gun control, but getting tougher on criminals. Build more 
     prisons. Lock up three-time felons for life. I argue that if 
     we focus more on getting the illegal guns off the streets, 
     and putting a high tax on ammunition for guns, the crime rate 
     would drop. There is no other weapon than can cause the 
     damage to human life, the way a gun can. Most crimes are 
     committed with a handgun. They maim and kill countless 
     innocent victims each year.

  Mr. President, we will probably approve some version of the Senate-
passed crime bill this spring. And we should. But this legislation will 
not end our crime problems. It may not even make an appreciable 
difference.
  Would the death penalty, mandatory minimum sentences, or ``three 
strikes and you're out'' have saved Ms. Davis' children? I do not know. 
But if the most insidious varieties of handgun ammunition had been more 
difficult to obtain, it might have made a difference for Ms. Davis' 
children--and for the thousands of others who died from gunshots in the 
United States in 1993.
  I do hope that my colleagues will read the letter Ms. Davis sent to 
me and the Daily News article describing her tragic story.
  Mr. President, I ask that the letter from Ms. Davis and the July 7, 
1993, Daily News article about her be printed in the Record.
  The material follows:

                                                December 15, 1993.
     Hon. Daniel P. Moynihan,
     New York, NY.
       Dear Senator Moynihan: Thank you for your support of the 
     Brady bill. There are about 200 million guns in America, 
     about 67 million of them handguns. There are an estimated 1.5 
     million guns in the hands of criminals in New York alone. 
     According to Handgun Control Inc. every year at least 24,000 
     Americans are killed with handguns.
       We can no longer tolerate this destruction of human lives. 
     I have lost all of my children (3 sons) to handguns. I 
     commend you on your suggestion to impose a high tax on 
     bullets. You said that ``guns do not kill people bullets 
     do.'' A gun is useless without bullets.
       We have to start putting human life before profits. Once a 
     bullet kills someone no amount of money will ever bring them 
     back. The NRA argues that the answer to crime and violence is 
     not gun control, but getting tougher on criminals. Build more 
     prisons. Lock up three-time felons for life. I argue that if 
     we focus more on getting the illegal guns off the streets, 
     and putting a high tax on ammunition for guns, the crime rate 
     will drop. There is no other weapon that can cause the damage 
     to human life, the way a gun can. Most crimes are committed 
     with a handgun. They main and kill countless innocent victims 
     each year.
       Mr. Moynihan what can I do as a mother who has lost 3 
     children to gun violence to help in the cause for stricter 
     gun control?
           Sincerely,
                                                 Frances E. Davis.
                                  ____


                  [From the Daily News, July 7, 1993]

   Bullets Bury Her Three Sons--One by One, Violence Claimed Them All

                             (By Schridan)

       A Brooklyn teenager who lost two brothers to gunfire 
     himself died in a hail of bullets outside his grandmother's 
     Bedford-Stuyvesant home yesterday.
       A 10-year-old girl who lived in the same building also was 
     injured when two gunmen fired about 10 shots into a crowd 
     enjoying the lunchtime sunshine on the sidewalk outside the 
     Tompkins Houses on Throup Ave.
       Police said Frank Davis, 18, of Sterling Place, Crown 
     Heights, was shot in the chest about 12:20 p.m. He was 
     pronounced dead at Woodhull Hospital.
       The injured girl, Yolanda McDowell, was in guarded 
     condition at the same hospital with a bullet wound to her 
     left cheek.
       Neighbors said Davis may have been the target of the 
     shooting but police could not immediately confirm that.
       John Roldan, 27, said that on Monday night a youth with the 
     street name Black was slashed in the face--apparently by 
     Davis.
       ``It's just retribution,'' he said, ``And it ain't over 
     yet, either.''
       ``This is really unbelievable,'' said the victim's mother, 
     Frances Davis. ``I cannot believe that this can happen three 
     times to the same family in the same housing complex. My son 
     was 18. He never got into trouble. He never bothered anyone. 
     He was my last child.'' She said her two other sons, 20 and 
     22, were both shot within blocks of the latest incident, one 
     in 1987 and the other in 1991.
       Diana Coachman, a parttime minister at St. Paul's Church of 
     Christ, said she has lived in the Davis family's Sterling 
     Place building for the last 32 years, and that Frank Davis 
     had frequently stayed at his grandmother's Throop Ave., 
     apartment.
       Scott Darden, 21 a resident of the Tompkins Houses, said he 
     was standing out front with a group of about a dozen 
     neighbors when two men sped up to the building in a blue 
     Nissan Stanza and braked to a hard stop.
       The two jumped out and opened fire, apparently with 9-mm. 
     handguns, Darden said.
       ``When I saw the guns, I ran back into the building,'' 
     Darden said.
       The two gunmen jumped back into their vehicle and sped 
     away, witnesses said.
       Police said they were hunting two men. No weapons were 
     recovered, they said.
       McDowell's father, Gary Gates, 31, said he was lying on the 
     couch in the family's third-floor apartment at the rear of 
     the building when he heard the gunshots.
       ``It sounded like it was coming from the rear,'' Gates 
     said. ``right away, I thought of my son who was at some PAL 
     thing over there.''
       But then, Gates said that his 11-year-old son, Gary Jr., 
     raced into the apartment to say that Yolanda had been shot.
       Gates said he found the girl ``standing in shock up against 
     the wall.
       ``She couldn't talk,'' her father said. ``Her tongue was 
     swollen and she looked like she was having trouble 
     breathing.''
       He said he picked up the girl and started running toward 
     the hospital.
                                  ____


                  [From the Daily News, July 7, 1993]

                      Eldest Middle--Now ``Baby''

                          (By Alice McQuillan)

       Three coffins fit in the grave site Frances Davis bought in 
     Cypress Hills Cemetery when her eldest son was murdered six 
     years ago.
       She never dreamed the plot would be needed again in 
     November 1991, and now this week for the same terrible 
     purpose: to bury another son shot to death in the same 
     Brooklyn neighborhood.
       ``I bought it after Raleak got killed,'' said Davis, 43, 
     ``It was cheaper to get it for three than it was to get it 
     for one. I never expected to use them again anytime soon. And 
     I definitely didn't expect to use them again for my other 
     sons. I thought if anything, it would be me.''
       Some kind of awful order prevailed as Davis' three sons 
     were all cut down, starting with the eldest boy, then the 
     middle one and finally the youngest.


                           Robber slew first

       A robber got Raleak Saunders, 20, a sheet-metal worker who 
     was engaged to be married and had earned 36 credits at 
     Adelphi University. Shot once in the stomach, he died June 7, 
     1987. The alleged killer was arrested and in a later plea 
     bargain served three and half years, Davis said.
       Andrew Saunders, 22, the middle son, was drifting in life 
     and supposed to enter a computer training program. He 
     allegedly got into an argument on Nov. 2, 1991, that cost him 
     his life. Two gunmen shot him four times. He died 12 days 
     later in Kings County Hospital. No one was arrested.
       Finally, Frank Davis, 18, his mother's ``baby,'' fell to a 
     hail of automatic gunfire outside his grandmother's apartment 
     building yesterday. His mother said he was depressed over 
     losing his brothers. He dropped out of Eastern District High 
     School and mostly stayed at home watching videos.


                        trip to florida planned

       Frances Davis had planned to take him and other relatives 
     on a trip to Florida this weekend. Frank had enrolled in a 
     General Equivalency Diploma program and was preparing to go 
     into counseling, like his mother.
       Now, Davis said, she dreads returning to the same hospital 
     where Andrew had lingered to identify the body of his 
     brother.
       ``I'm angry. I'm angry with everybody right now,'' she 
     said. ``The system, God, everybody. God says that he doesn't 
     put on anybody more than they can bear. But he took every 
     single child that I had.''
       With a lost look on her face, Davis sat yesterday in her 
     mother's apartment in the Tompkins Houses in Bedford-
     Stuyvesant. Five stories below, bullet holes pockmarked the 
     steel front door where Frank fell.
       She pointed out the window to another brick building across 
     the courtyard, where Andrew had been shot. Looking across 
     Throop Ave., she pointed out the nearby Sumner Houses, where 
     Raleak had been slain.
       ``Just feet from each other,'' she said.
       ``They didn't do drugs, they didn't drink,'' she said. 
     ``There was no reason for them to hide anything from me. They 
     didn't smoke cigarettes.''
       Now losing the youngest, the one who still lived at home, 
     has left Davis numb beyond comfort.
       ``I don't know what I'm going to do,'' she said. ``I feel 
     very depressed. I've nothing to live for.''

                          ____________________