PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Family, friends and community members gathered Sunday evening for a vigil in Homewood to speak out against gun violence and to remember a man gunned down two years ago in front of his fiancée’s children.

Jimmy Short was shot and killed at the age of 35. Police have said the shooting was a case of mistaken identity.

Short was shot and killed at the intersection of North Braddock Avenue and Formosa Way on July 25, 2010. Authorities said his fiancée and her two children were in the car when he was killed.

“My son took a bullet in his back from a .357 magnum and subsequently died,” Debra Short, Jimmy’s mother, said.

Saturday would have been Short’s 37th birthday.

So, on Sunday, balloons were put out for a vigil in his memory and one for those who have died to gun violence.

Dressed in black and gold to celebrate Short’s favorite football team, his mother and others gathered, determined to not only remember lives lost, but to stop the violence.

“This is far beyond an issue, it has to become a priority that we put a lot of resources, or the resources that we need, behind it to make sure that we stop this shooting in the streets,” said Ed Gainey, a state representative nominee.

With prayers, songs and signs, they came together with one message, stop shooting.

It’s a message Short’s uncle supports. He says he also taught the man accused in the shooting.

“I lose a great nephew, and then I also lose someone who I had worked with since the fourth grade,” said Melvin El, Short’s uncle.

Short’s mother says the loss of a child is something no one should ever have to go through.

“If it’s just one individual that they find another means of resolving their conflicts so that another mother, family, loved ones, fathers, they don’t have to go through all this,” she said.

Short was a father of three. His mother credits her faith for getting her through the past two years.

RELATED LINKS:
More Homewood News
More Local News