National Gun Violence Memorial Project asks for mementos from Pittsburgh victims

PITTSBURGH — So far this year, the City of Pittsburgh has investigated 38 homicides, a number that continues to concern city leaders.

Gun violence has seen a rise across the nation, and a national project is now trying to highlight the victims.

The National Gun Violence Memorial Project got its start in 2019, but the pandemic stopped it before it got started.

Now the group is here in Pittsburgh asking for mementos from gun violence victims and their loved ones. These small mementos bring back memories for Edie Khoury.

“Matthew died in my arms in this room,” Khoury said.

Her 37-year-old son was shot and killed in his Garfield home in 2019. He’s one of thousands of gun violence victims across the state each year.

Rev. Glenn Grayson shares that same pain. Now the two are using their shared sorrow to memorialize their children in the same way.

“Nothing will bring back a child, but it will bring peace. I personally lost my son at 18,” Grayson said. “We will have a picture, we will have his number 7, which was his football sports career number.”

Glenn and Khoury will each fill a glass brick with their memories.

Those bricks will then fill glass houses in Washington D.C., as part of the National Gun Violence Memorial Project.

“There are four houses, each house has 700 glass bricks, representing the number of gun violence victims each week in the United States,” explained Emily Ebersol with the National Gun Violence Memorial Project.

The team behind the project is in Pittsburgh this weekend asking anyone touched by gun violence to contribute.

The hope is to bring comfort to the families and awareness of a growing problem.

“When a bullet pierces a victim, the biggest impact is to the family and friends, and then it goes out into the community,” explained Khoury..

The memorial offerings will be added to the project as they come in, and it will be open to the public at the National Museum in Washington until September 2022.

The hope is that after that, it will travel across the country.

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