A mother has posted a video of her son speaking about his fear of violence in their city of St Louis.
Jeffrey Laney says he is “really scared to die” and “really scared for my family to die”.
Jeffrey says he should not be aware of all the violence that happens in his neighbourhood at such a young age.
“I'm a kid ... I know about all bad stuff I shouldn't know about, I'm supposed to be learning about school," he said.
“I just want people to stop killing each other.”
In this year alone, 62 people were murdered in St Louis - the majority in gun-related crimes.
Chicago has historically been America's worst city for gun violence, but the homicide rate in St Louis is currently three times the rate of Chicago’s at 59.6 people per 100,000.
In an interview with Fox 2, the boy's mother Leanndra Cheatham spoke about the effect of violence on kids in St Louis.
Leanndra Cheatham with her son Jeffrey. Source: LeeLee Cheatham, Facebook
“We need to value life more and we need to watch what we do around these little ones,” she said.
“When you go to shoot at a vehicle, retaliation, all those negative things - think about him [her son], think about how he feels.”
After posting the video on Facebook, Cheatham said she received a message from a man who was planning to kill someone out of revenge but decided not to after watching her son’s video
“That there alone touched me and I hope he touched plenty more people,” Cheatham told Fox 2.
“I'm tired of seeing mothers bury their child. It hurts,” she said.
Jeffrey can already see the futility of violence in his city.
“All these people that's hurting and killing each other, we need to stop this, because that ain't going to get them nowhere, you just end up locked up,” he said in the video.
Jeffrey ends the video by asking people to “be a grown man and just act good.”
Watch the full video:
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