Newtown Fights Back Against Negative Perceptions of Neighborhood

Following a Good Friday service at the Greater Hurst Chapel, Newtown leaders, city and county officials and members of the police department gathered at the front of the church to stand up for the image of Newtown.

The area, they say, has been unnecessarily characterized as a gang town by many in the press after 16-year-old Newtown resident Shawn Tyson allegedly killed two British tourists on April 16.

Trevor Harvey, president of the Sarasota County NAACP, was the lone person to speak at the press conference. 

“Our prayers and condolences go out to the young men’s families who lost their live on the morning of April 16,” Harvey said. “In no way does anyone deserve to lose their life in that way and this community doesn’t condone nor will it tolerate that type of behavior and we’ll stand up against.”

Tyson, who missed his 9am court hearing on Friday, is being held as an adult for an April 7 arrest where he shot at a car and was charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.  He was charged with two county of murder for the deaths of James Cooper and James Kouzaris, but he has not been charged as adult for those crimes yet.

Harvey said one person’s actions should not define the community as a whole.

Mayor Kelly Kirschner said that violent crime in Newtown is actually down the past two years. The tourists’ deaths are the first murders in the city limits this year. Still, he said, he takes the murders very seriously and at no time should someone feel in danger while walking around in Sarasota.  

“We have some soul searching for us as a community,” he said in an interview after the press conference. “It’s at the family level, neighborhood level, county and state government.”

Harvey closed the conference by asking the press, the community and concerned parties to not portray the people of Newtown as “scoundrels, the ghetto, animals, gang ridden and all the other horrific names our community is being called. Instead, call us determined, call us over comers and call us people who are willing to turn our past struggles into tomorrows victories.”