/ Friends of KJ Taylor give interviews to the media at the site where he was shot two days prior in Charleston, W.Va. on Friday, April 9, 2021.
In the six years leading up to 2020, the average number of non-suicide related gun deaths per year in the United States hovered around 14,000. Last year, that death toll spiked, surpassing 19,000. And, this year isn’t much better. So far this year, 5,986 people have already died from a non-suicide related gun shot.
Recently, a Kanawha County teen, KJ Taylor, was shot and killed on Glenwood Avenue on Charleston’s West Side. In what his friends would say was either a stray bullet or a case of mistaken identity, KJ was hit in the chest and died moments later. The person who shot him has yet to be arrested.