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Annunciation shooting: Victim's uncle calls for action
The uncle of one of the surviving victims of the Annunciation school shooting spoke with FOX 9's Corin Hoggard.
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - One of the surviving victims has made it through surgery, and he’s had some trouble keeping food down, but he’s otherwise on the road to recovery.
A lucky victim
Wounded but healing:
Endre Gunter is a gregarious 13-year-old who started eighth grade at Annunciation this week after a summer filled with sports.
On Wednesday, he took two gunshot wounds to the abdomen during the morning mass.
"He is one of the lucky ones that made it out," said his uncle, Yusef Davis. "He's going to make it out of this situation alive."
Endre had successful surgery and lifted spirits around him, but his uncle knows there are people who will never recover.
He heard them get bad news in the hospital.
"Listening to a mother's cry whose child did not make it," Davis said. "Listening to that, I will forever remember that."
READ MORE: Annunciation Church school shooting: What we know about the victims
How to repair
A building, a society:
The work to repair the building started Thursday, but Davis says the bigger challenge is repairing a society where, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, there have been more than 420 school shootings since Columbine in 1999.
He says healing starts with acknowledging what he believes is America’s original sin.
"The stolen land, the free labor that built this empire," he said. "You know what I mean? Not only are Indigenous and Black folks hurting, but my European brothers and sisters are hurting equally as well."
Davis knows about the shooter’s anti-Semitic and racist rants and he says a racial reckoning is driving some of the country’s mental health crisis, especially among young white men.
And without addressing that and more common sense gun safety laws, he says school shootings will eventually touch every family.
So he wants his nephew’s to be the impetus for trying something different.
"I want to challenge our Governor Davis said. "I want challenge our president. I want a challenge anybody who can create change to do something, because... Why should we have to wait until it's on their doorstep?"
How to help
What you can do:
Endre’s family sent prayers to the other victims of the tragedy here, and they asked people to pray for him as well.
They also asked those who are able to help with Endre's ongoing medical costs and the family's expenses.