JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Local leaders are calling Moncrief Road on the Northside one of Jacksonville’s deadliest streets.
This weekend, former criminals and victims of crime are gathering to show the community that they have had enough.
“This is the first time I’ve been back on these grounds since my son was murdered here,” Pastor Robert Lecount Jr. said.
Lecount drives past the intersection of Moncrief and Soutel every Sunday.
“He probably was laying somewhere right about out there from when he got shot,” Lecount said, referencing a spot near the intersection.
Twelve years later, he’s frustrated that the Moncrief Road area is still a hotbed of violent crime.
That’s why he and other pastors will be out on Moncrief Road on Saturday, handing out bottles of water labeled "Quench the Violence."
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“In other words, you can take a drink and you can think about it, and with that drink it’ll give you an opportunity to think and it may cause you to change your mind from committing that next violent crime,” Lecount said.
Bernard Brown will be out there with him.
“I have been convicted of homicide twice,” Brown said.
He spent 18 years in prison. While he was there he got a wake-up call from pastors ministering to him.
“When I look back at it, it hurts. It hurts. Because the one thing you can’t give back, you can’t give life back,” Brown said.
So he’s trying to give back in other ways. He ministers to young people struggling with the same pressures to commit crime to fit in in the same area where he used to be a criminal.
He does it so fathers like Lecount don’t have to bury their children.
The group of ministers is still looking for volunteers to help on Saturday.
They will be gathering at 11 a.m. at Disciples of Christ Christian Fellowship on Edgewood Avenue.
WJAX
