On July 29, 14-year-old basketball star Semaj Miller was gunned down in South Los Angeles.
At six-foot-seven-inches tall, the Compton teenager was expected to go far with the L.A. City Wildcats, an association that helped launch the career of NBA player James Harden.
Now the community is mourning his loss.
"Semaj was such a talented kid who lost his life too soon," Rapper Percy “Master P” Miller, a coach and part-owner of the team, told Cheddar. "We have to stop this senseless killing, gun violence in our community. It's not the police. This is us killing us."
Miller lamented that gun violence is robbing the next generation of its talent, as well as those who could find success and come back and invest in their communities.
"This kid could have been the next LeBron James, could have been the next James Harden," he said. "We'll never get to know how talented this kid could have been."
Stepping outside of the rhetoric used in recent protests against police violence, the rapper said it was the responsibility of citizens to stop the violence in their own communities.
"I know we're out here protesting for Black Lives Matter, but my thing is, 'Okay, our kids matter,'" he said. "This is our future."
Miller didn't outline specific preventive measures but emphasized parenting and education.
"It's got to start in our community. We have to stand up for these kids. We have to protect them. We have to educate them," he said.
The editors of the 2021 World Happiness Report found that longer-term satisfaction didn't change much despite the pandemic. Finland placed first for the fourth consecutive year. The U.S. slipped from 18th to 19th place.
Cheddar talks to a group of Maryland teachers who took on the added task of hunting down vaccine appointments on behalf of the local seniors and Spanish-speaking populace.
Another lockdown in France as the AstraZeneca vaccine goes back into arms, the POTUS and VPOTUS head to Atlanta, a milestone for streaming media, and a N2K Spotify playlist is coming!
Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash. 10th District), one of four Korean Americans to be elected to Congress, talked about the need for urgency and accountability following the killing of eight people, including six Asian women.
Scientists in the U.S. and Canada are opening new fronts in the war against so-called murder hornets as the giant insects begin establishing nests this spring.
Jill and Carlo discuss the latest on the Atlanta shooting rampage, worrisome signs from the Northeast as COVID cases plateau, stimmy checks hitting bank accounts, and Biden lets the dogs back.
Doug Scott, Twitch CMO, talked to Cheddar about the platform's streaming success partly by allowing its audience to be creators as well.
Israeli archaeologists have announced dozens of newly discovered Dead Sea Scroll fragments bearing a biblical text.
A series of shootings at three Atlanta area massage parlors left eight people dead and raised fears that the attack was yet another hate crime against Asian Americans.
A massacre at Atlanta massage parlors puts new focus on anti-Asian hate crimes. What the heck is the EU up to with its vaccination efforts? And the most popular dog breed is...
