Trevon Bosley will be one of 50,000 people at the start of the TCS New York City Marathon on Sunday. But the motivation for his first 26.2-mile race is personal: advocating for gun violence prevention.
In 2005, Bosley’s cousin Vincent Avant was shot and killed down the street from his Chicago home. In 2021, Bosley’s brother Terrell Bosley – an 18-year-old aspiring bassist – was shot and killed outside the Lights of Zion Church in Chicago’s West Pullman neighborhood.
“It really shook everything up in the family,” Bosley said. The family stopped celebrating holidays and even listening to music. “We only started to find relief by doing prevention work.”
That work will bring Bosley to the starting line at the foot of the Verrazano Bridge in Staten Island, New York. And now Bosley is raising money and awareness for the gun control group March for Our Lives as part of Team Inspire – a group of 26 runners with varying levels of marathon experience – facilitated by New York Road Runners, which produces the marathon. Sunday’s 26.2-mile race comes less than a year after he became interested in running.
Bosley and his family have dedicated their lives to ending gun violence and helping loved ones of those lost to it. Bosley previously served as a mentor for Chicago’s Bold Resistance Against Violence Everywhere (BRAVE), which organizes talent shows, basketball tournaments and other events. Through his work, he met with victims of the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting to share stories about members’ experiences with gun violence in Chicago.
In addition to his full-time job as an electrical engineer, Bosley also co-chairs the board of March For Our Lives, the youth-led nonprofit founded by Parkland students in the wake of the mass shooting to fight for gun legislation.
To help address gun violence in Chicago and beyond, March For Our Lives pushed for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a bill President Joe Biden signed in June 2022 that expanded federal background checks for people under the age of 21, and efforts to reduce mental and improve behavioral skills. community health services. Bosley and the group also worked to pass an assault weapons ban in Illinois last year.
Between his community work and the trauma he experienced from gun violence hitting so close to home, Bosley said he started running to test his body and find redemption “while things were just starting to pile up.”
“I needed something to comfort me and take my mind off things,” he said. “I heard people talking about running, as if it was relaxing for them and that it helped them.” After I started running regularly, “it really started to clear my head and it only did positive things for me.”
Other members of Bosley’s family have used their grief to take action. His parents Pam and Tim Bosley co-founded a group called ‘Purpose Over Pain’, which provides support to parents who have lost children to violence. Many members of the group are trying to find answers in their child’s case because “most of the cases are unsolved,” Bosley said, adding that his brother and nephew are among those cases. Bosley also has a brother named Terrez.
Although gun violence in Chicago has decreased in recent years, it is still an ongoing problem. Data from the Chicago Police Department shows that the city’s gun violence and homicide rates will fall 13% to pre-pandemic levels by 2023. Still, that year, at 617, was the city’s fifth-highest number of homicides since 2004.
Bosley said gun violence in Chicago stems from “a host of problems” in Chicago, including a lack of funding in the city’s education system, a lack of workforce programs and the infusion of guns from neighboring states like Indiana with laxer gun laws. .
“Indiana is only a 15-minute drive away,” he said. “So we have all these other issues that we’re trying to reduce in our community and now we’re seeing the influx of guns coming in. That has created the gun violence we see in Chicago.”
The peace Bosley finds through running is something he wants to convey to others. His next project through March For Our Lives will likely implement a mental wellness initiative to provide peace and relaxation days to communities experiencing gun violence by offering yoga, meditation and other stress-reducing activities.
With his schedule busy with work and gun violence prevention, he makes time for the long runs that marathon training requires. He prefers to train at a local forest preserve in Chicago.
But as the marathon approaches, Bosley admits he’s nervous. His family will be watching, but perhaps more importantly it will be a token from his brother Terrell that he can have in his pocket on race day, a symbol of his quest to “take my brother’s story everywhere.” During the marathon, he said he was allowed to “carry my brother’s chain in my pocket, just to push me through.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
