As students went back to school in Milwaukee this year, nearly two dozen seats were left empty from children who have died due to gun violence since June 2024.
That's the premise of new reporting from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel titled The Lost Class. Reporters Cleo Krejci and David Clarey examine the cycle of loss: "Each time a young person is shot and killed, their loved ones pack funeral parlors and erect public memorials. School communities mourn the loss of a friend, student and classmate. Elected officials pledge action."
"Then, it happens again."
In The Lost Class the reporting team memorializes each of the children lost between June 2024 and June 2025 by name. With the help of Journal Sentinel interns Mia Thurow, Francesca Pica, Ariela Lopez and Jack Albright the team contacted as many families as possible to share details of the lives lost.
WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal spoke with Krejci and Clarey about why they felt now was a good time to tell this story, and what solutions arose through the reporting process.
You can read "The Lost Class" here.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Katherine Kokal: Let's start with what the story is about. There are a lot of people listening who may not have read it yet, but they will after hearing this. So tell me, in your words, what is the story really about?
Cleo Krejci: I think this story is about a pattern we see in this city, which is unmistakably a lot of anger, pain and calls for action after a child is shot and killed. And we notice that this happens continually, and it feels to a lot of people like nothing is changing despite the fact that we know a lot of work is being done to fix it. So we wanted to capture that pattern and almost like the mood in the city or we talked about it being like a “State of the Union” almost as to the state of children getting shot and killed in Milwaukee.
David Clarey: Obviously those are really tough stories, right? But we wanted people to read them and to care. And I think there's a belief in our newsroom, I think in a lot of newsrooms, that the best way to see something change is to make people care about it. And I think when you read stories like this, we presented what happened to all of these kids, and then also tried to present possible solutions that are going on around the city. And so we want to show both those things. But I think one of the biggest priorities is to make people care about this.
Kokal: A lot of times we'll see these headlines flash up, maybe we know the name of a child that has died, and we usually know their age. And then it's kind of up to the people around that child to share information about them. Are there any details or interviews that really stuck out to you in the process of talking to families?
Krejci: I spoke with the great aunt of a four-year-old girl who was shot accidentally, and it was a really tough conversation to have, but what stuck out to me was her breadth of emotions. It wasn't just anger and rage almost at this cyclical pattern of violence, but also, of course, the loss of a family member. She had told me how her own kids were grown up already, and so this was the youngest child in her life, and she was looking forward to bringing her to school and seeing her grow up. Basically, an unsecured gun carelessly handled took that all away.
Clarey: Whenever you're talking with families, parents, or extended family who have gone through something like a child being shot and killed, almost any (part) of the story stands out to you. You can hear their grief, you can hear memories and things like that. But I think what was interesting, in a way, about this story is some of these, there was some amount of distance from when it happened. We were, I think, able to speak candidly with a lot of the family members that we were, and with some level of kind of like in retrospect.
So I spoke with the mother, Catherine Mazaba, whose son Ben was killed in a shooting that remains unsolved, and kind of about her efforts to keep her son out of trouble. Her efforts to connect him with resources. And I think those, like hearing that, I think is something that often, like when we're reporting on this, can get lost too is like, what are the parents, the families trying to do? Because like you mentioned, we do find out the name. We find out the age, or at least usually. And I think what we don't always hear though in the immediate aftermath is like the story behind the moments before, the days, the weeks, the months before something like this happens, how people are trying to stop it.
Kokal: In Catherine Mazaba’s story specifically, she detailed the numerous years that she spent trying to get Ben on the path that she felt was safest for him. She intervened multiple times in his life before he was shot and killed. And so chronicling that speaks to all that is being done before something like this happens in our community. Why was right now the right time to tell this story?
Clarey: A lot of it had to do with Superintendent Cassellius putting such a spotlight on this issue. And then like Cleo said, you know, this happens almost in, not to sound too cynical, but like in a cyclical way, right? I report on these things whenever they happen. And there is sort of a cadence that follows. It's a tragedy, the public officials speak out. And so I think when (Superintendent Cassellius) was sort of taking a step back, and kind of looking at the breadth of it, it kind of provided an opportunity for us to do the same thing. Get out of the daily machinations of these things and kind of look at the impact this has, not just on families, not just on the city, but on a school district, a classroom, friends, all these different spaces. I think that was a big impetus for it.
Krejci: I think we intentionally had it come out at the beginning of this school year to remind people that these are children who are still in, middle and high school and elementary school, and that each calendar school year, there will be classes in our city of kids who literally lose a student because of this... actually multiple classes at multiple schools. We did that intentionally to some degree to help it stick with people. You know, when people have been talking about this since publication, they've all repeated this line of there were enough children shot and killed to fill a classroom. That was some smart journalism work on the part of our editors to get that fact to stick in people's minds and to connect it with schools.
I also think that often in reporting about these shootings in the daily cycle, it's very easy to forget that they are young. So even if we're talking about 16, 17, 18 year olds. Nobody at that age actually feels young, right? You feel like you're an adult. But if we're talking in the grand scheme of things, these are very young human beings. S o in part of memorializing them with the individual vignettes and tying it to schools, we're pointing out that these are people who, you know, still know their grandparents, who have little siblings at home that they play with, who go to basketball practice and who are doing things that other kids are doing at the same time. It's just that some kids in the city are also getting pushed into very adult activities because of a whole host of reasons. It's the beginning of a school year. And so we hope that people will remember that as they drop their kids off at school.
Kokal: Something that you pointed out in all of the stories that you put together here were that people's ideas about solutions were different. There was not a unifying voice saying, “this is how we're going to solve this problem.” Can we talk a little bit about some of the solutions you heard and what stood out to you?
Clarey: I think what is so interesting or kind of pertinent about the range of solutions is because the range of reasons is just as wide. You can't just address like a need for mentorship or something like that and expect that to solve everything. You need to have this wide range of solutions there. I think programs, we profile two of them, both are through the county, but like Credible Messengers and Advance Peace. Those are violence prevention programs that pair youth with people who understand their kind of lived experience, who may have done something wrong in their own life too. And then, try to relate to these kids, try to stay in touch with them and try to just help them avoid trouble. But I think it's like developing that relationship. Like for instance, in Advance Peace, they have to talk with their mentor three times a day. So checking in with that person, you know, you're going to know what's going on is the idea anyway, right? And know when something's up, and be there to kind of intervene hopefully before something does happen, or to know when something might be bubbling. So I think things like that, to me, seem like they're doing really strong work. We'll just have to kind of see how the results play out in some of these cases, but they have results. They assess these programs, and it seems like the early returns are really positive.
Krejci: Broadly speaking, you can split the efforts into two camps. One is prevention and one is reaction. So like David was just talking about, these are programs that work with young people who are already at risk of shootings.But there's also work being done to prevent that from happening, whether it's by providing enrichment through music and arts and sports, or it's through mentorship. I think what everybody agrees is that there needs to be more of a recognition that gun violence is the product of a lot of more deeply entrenched issues in society, such as a lack of basic resources, such as housing instability, not having enough food to eat, that kind of stuff. So people are drawn or pushed into gun violence early in life because they are selling drugs because they need to make money to feed their families. Very frankly, that's what people told us. And so I think a lot of people told us it would be helpful if there was a broader recognition that, people aren't shooting and killing each other because of nothing. It often feels like that. It can feel like, the trigger is pulled and it's over and it's just this quick reaction. But there are so many things that go into it before the actual death occurs. And I don't think that's the way it's always talked about in the public.
—
Cleo Krejci covers K-12 education and workforce development as a Report For America corps member based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact her at CKrejci@gannett.com.
David Clarey is a public safety reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He can be reached at dclarey@gannett.com.
Katherine Kokal is the education reporter at 89.7 WUWM - Milwaukee's NPR. Have a question about schools or an education story idea? You can reach her at kokal@uwm.edu
