INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A mom has come forward to recount the horror of finding out her daughter was shot in the mass shooting in the early morning July 5 in downtown Indianapolis.

That shooting left two people dead and five others hurt.

Bionka Killebrew said her 18-year-old daughter was grazed on an arm in the shooting. “She was grazed in her arm with a bullet. She was so scared. She was actually hiding behind cars when it happened. As a mother, I’m like, ‘Wow.’ It made me look at things different.”

While her daughter is healing physically, the emotional scars remain.

Killebrew said her daughter was in the wrong place at the wrong time, a painful reminder that shootings can happen anywhere in the city. Killebrew wants the violence to stop, and has urged others to step up. She said enforcing the curfew is a start. Killebrew supports the city’s curfew, hoping it will help keep more teens off the streets at night and out of harm’s way.

“I don’t think I’ll let my other children go there. Not now. Not until I see that things are more structured.”.

As Killebrew sees it, change starts with honest conversation, and the courage to speak up. “I just say to the parents, keep praying, and, to the kids, put the guns down.”

The Indianapolis TenPoint Coalition, led by the Rev. Charles Harrison, stepped up during the weekend downtown to help enforce the curfew and encourage peace during the WNBA All-Star and Indiana Black Expo activities. Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department reported that no curfew violations downtown.

Harrison said, “I think a lot of parents who came down their had their children, so they didn’t just send their parents, they came with them. Other parents decided that since they could not come, they were not going to let their children come downtown, and that was key.”

But, Harrison says, there’s still work to be done across the city. He hopes to see better follow-through in the future from city leaders. He says it’s crucial to continue to build connections. “When you have those kind of relationships, it really helps to tamp down violence because people share stuff with you and you can get in front of potential acts of violence when you know the people involved who may be in conflict with one another.”

Harrison says the TenPoint Coalition will continue its patrols in hotspots across Indianapolis, and hopes more parents and children continue to follow curfew and seek better conflict resolution.

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