The president of the Africville Genealogy Society is calling for a safety audit after five people were shot during the community’s 41st annual reunion in Halifax, Nova Scotia over the weekend.

Irvine Carvery said the society’s board of directors will hold an emergency meeting Tuesday night to review the shooting and discuss what can be done to improve safety at future gatherings.

“The reunion will be on next year. We are Africville Strong. We are not leaving. We are not going to allow that incident to define who we are as a people,” Carvery told reporters on Monday.

“The perpetrators that came in and did that are not from Africville.”

The Africville Family Reunion aims to bring together former residents and their descendants. The community was uprooted in the 1960s when the City of Halifax demolished homes to make way for the A. Murray MacKay Bridge.

During celebrations Saturday, two men exchanged gunfire and the bullets went into the crowd, injuring five people. 

“There was one young lady who unfortunately got hit in the neck, and what I understand is the bullet lodged near her spine and they couldn’t operate to remove it,” Carvery said.

“So I don’t know what her prognosis is, but she’s alive. She is going to live. That’s the main thing. We gotta give God thanks for that, that she is going to live.”

Halifax Regional Police said both men involved in the shooting had left the area by the time officers arrived. The investigation is ongoing.

You can read more in an article by Anjuli Patil published in the cbc.ca web site at: https://bit.ly/4fnd8tY