A community meeting to talk about stopping violence around the Wilcox Boulevard Kanku’s convenience store fizzled Saturday when the store owners didn’t appear.
Shankao Chaudhari said neither he nor his nephew, who co-owns the store, were contacted by the North Brainerd Community Council for a meeting. He said he would be open to meeting with community leaders to try and improve safety in the area.
“My family works at the store. This is for them, too,” he said. “We all have a bottom goal of making the community safer.”
Two people have died in recent shootings at the Wilcox Boulevard Kanku’s, sparking a flurry of meetings last week.
Leaders point to increasing security at the store as one short-term solution. Others say it will take a combined effort by property owners, government officials, police, churches and schools to attack the root causes of young men doing violence to each other.