The Bayview Community Center Foundation is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

While the Joseph Lee Center (two blocks down) is being built, it provides a safe space for Bayview students to do their homework, participate in table sports and talk to their friends. Only on Friday, March 16, Nisha Morgan was shot in fron of the Bayview Community Foundation’s Center at Third Street and Quesada.

A groups of family, friends and supporters stood outside of the Center and remember a vibrant young woman who was getting ready to go to the college-the first in her family to do so.

A preacher talked about how the Mayor and the City had left down the Bayview. Tom Hendericks of Acorn stated that the Bayview community was treated like an ugly step child. Yul Duran noted that the area’s community centers (except for the Y and the Bayview Community Foundation’s Centers) were closed for repairs.

Each of the speakers had someone who was lost in a drive-by shooting. The first speaker lost her brother in 1989. Yul Duran lost his nephew.

Behind me, someone said, “I never imagined that I would be here for Nisha. Of all people, she was never around any trouble.”

After a heartful tribute, Pastor Yul Duran who also works for DPH as a crisis outreach specialist said the best prayer of the candlelight vigil. “Let us pray that this is the last death that we have here.”

Amen to that prayer.