Beyond the Bullets | Louisville family confronts the cycle of youth violence

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A vicious cycle is playing out in Louisville time and time again — young people dead in the streets or charged in the city's most shocking crimes.

The numbers tell the tale. According to city data, 93 juveniles have been killed and 400 others were shot and survived since January 2020.

This week, WDRB is looking beyond the bullets, hosting a roundtable discussion on youth violence with those impacted by it, involved in it and working to stop it. Among the participants is Rolanda Hamilton, a woman whose family has lived through the heartbreak at the center of Louisville's crisis.

"It's shock, it's anger, it's frustration, it's sadness," Hamilton said, recalling the sentencing of 16-year-old Brad Watkins, who killed her 13-year-old brother, Daviawn Blackmon. "Twenty-three years is not enough for taking a life. It's not enough."

Blackmon was shot in the head and robbed in an alley near Broadway and 38th Street in June 2024. The shooter, Watkins, was 15 at the time. His accomplice, Daniel Wallace, then 16, robbed Blackmon as he laid bleeding on the ground.

Hamilton channeled her grief into action, joining the Beyond the Bullets roundtable to share her lived experience and push for change in how the city deals with juvenile crime. She her brother struggled long before his death — in and out of mental hospitals and on home incarceration for months.

That kind of recruitment — and the city's response to it — are among the most controversial topics Hamilton raised.

"My family specifically endured someone who had a program that is putting these kids, selling drugs, stealing their drugs, making them butt heads with people not from the same community as them," she said. "But it's court ordered."

The conversation on WDRB includes people like Hamilton, who lost loved ones to violence, and others who encountered the justice system when they were young and are now trying to turn their lives around. It also brings together crime prevention and intervention advocates and spotlights programs with successful track records of mentorship that keeps kids safe and off the streets.

"You have a group of people right now getting out of prison whose brothers were killed 10, 12, 13 years ago," said Kim Moore, CEO of Joshua Community Connector and a member of the city's Group Violence Intervention task force. "And people are coming back to this community to retaliate, and that's what people are not talking about."

Jefferson County Juvenile Court Judge Anthony Jones also participated in the roundtable, explaining how the system is working to balance justice and rehabilitation.

"We act in the best interest of the child and we use the least restrictive alternatives to achieve that goal," Jones said.

But with 93 juveniles killed in Louisville over the last five years, half of the city's murders going unsolved and at least 50 active cases — according to county prosecutors where a juvenile is charged as an adult — many families feel the system is failing.

"He executed my son," said Dawn Brown, Blackmon's mother said during Watkins' sentencing hearing as she asked the judge to reject the terms of plea deal. "Twenty-three years is an understatement. It's a mockery and it's a joke."

Hamilton agrees.

"I think the state of Kentucky needs to do better," she said. "These kids are not getting punished correctly, and that's why we have this revolving cycle of kids killing each other."

For Hamilton, the grief never stops.

"It just sends a message for the kids to keep killing, keep robbing, keep stealing (and) keep doing what they're doing," she said.

Her pain has become her purpose — to make sure her brother's death, and so many others, aren't forgotten.

Because until something changes, Hamilton fears the next wave of grief won't be the last.

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