‘Adam Turck, 35, was shot Saturday morning while intervening in a domestic dispute he came across while walking his dog in Shockoe Bottom. When Turck intervened, a 19-year-old male produced a gun from a backpack and shot him.‘
Turck was a high-profile, much-beloved actor in the local theater scene; Shockoe Bottom is the most notorious neighborhood in a bunch of notorious violent Richmond neighborhoods. Note that his killing took place in the morning; you don’t have to wait until dark to get blown away in Richmond.
Read this for the cultural reality behind the killing.
‘Many [young people] aren’t coming for the clubs or bars. They’re just there, hanging out in the streets and often armed. There’s no event, no promoter, no leadership. Just music, cars, and open carry.
From a public safety standpoint, it’s a mess. From a business standpoint, it’s a slow death.
… One of the biggest changes? Guns.
Open carry is legal in Virginia. And the kids know it. The result is a flood of social media videos: AR-15s slung over shoulders, Glocks waved on Snapchat, drill videos filmed just blocks from where someone might be trying to have a date night.
“It’s not even about protection anymore,” [says one observer]. “It’s status.”
… . “People don’t feel safe,” he [says]. “And when that happens, nobody comes downtown.”
The deeper fear, though, the one no one wants to say out loud, is that one of these nights, it won’t just be posturing. It’ll be a shootout.‘
August 4th, 2025 at 9:38PM
Likely:
1) Drive down property and business value to allow investors to snap up land for homogenized franchise-style businesses (or datacenters for that matter)
2) Period of blight
3) Bring in “tough-on-crime” local government to protect the interests of the corporate shareholders
August 5th, 2025 at 4:31AM
The Baltimore model is an alternative.
August 5th, 2025 at 12:46PM
Nothing MAGA likes more than African Americans succeeding at something. /s