What happened to the small farm-town that we all knew and grew to love, the town where there was only one high school and everyone knew each other? The small town of Morgan Hill is now experiencing shootings (Police: Man killed in Gilroy shootout led officers to location, Sept. 10) and robberies, as its neighboring city Gilroy is.
In my 21 years here, the first shooting I had heard about in our small town was Michael Duran, an 18-year-old who was killed in a hit and run. This greatly impacted our small town. After this occasion it has become more common to hear of shootings around us.
Just as occurred on Sept. 8 in Gilroy, with David Lopez and a police officer. Lopez was a suspect in a prior shooting that occurred on Aug. 31, where there was one victim who was left in critical condition.
The shooting that occurred on Sept. 8 left the suspect, David Lopez, dead.
We need to regulate more gun control in our city/surrounding cities as well as more police officers patrolling the roads we roam every day. There should be no reason an 18-year-old adolescent has access to a gun where they can seriously harm themselves or others.
Morgan Hill is a small town with three exits off the freeway. You can easily go from one end of Morgan Hill to the other in no more than 10 minutes. If police officers patrolled more, possibly one time every hour, people would not only feel safer but crimes may go down knowing that there is an officer around.
We should not live in fear, we should feel safe driving around town and letting adolescents go out with friends and not having to fear if they will come back home alive. As a lifelong resident of Morgan Hill, we deserve to feel safe in our small town. We need change.
Daisy Fernandez
Morgan Hill
