On Tuesday night, ribbon-shaped ornaments were put on a tree outside the old Richmond County courtroom with the names of 68 women, men, and children.

All of them were hurt by domestic abuse in North Carolina this year.

The tree of memory was part of the yearly Domestic Violence Vigil put on by New Horizons Life and Family Services.

Kanisha Maranda Harrison Nealy was one of the names on the tree. She was said to have been killed in Hoffman in August in a murder-suicide.

The head of New Horizons, Teshika Wall, said, “We must stand up and speak for those whose voices were shut down by fear, shame, guilt, unbelief, and pain.” “A stand against violence in the home.”

Wall said she was happy to be at the vigil with the other people there because “you all have made a choice…to support those who have been abused and to stand behind survivors and say, ‘I will be your strength when you feel you have none,’” she said.

Wall said before going for a walk through downtown, “We make a stand and say we will not accept this in our community.” “We march to bring attention to this cause so that more people will join the fight and change can happen.”

At the beginning of the service, Amanda McKenzie asked God to “be with those who continue to suffer at the hands of their perpetrators…” Lord, keep them close and guard them. Give them strength and show them how to get out of their bad situations.

A report from the N.C. Department of Administration’s Council for Women and Youth Involvement on statewide domestic abuse from July 2021 to June 2022 shows that half of the people who go to shelters are between the ages of 25 and 59. The next largest group is children (36%), followed by people aged 18 to 24 (10%).

79% of people who get services in person or over the phone are women, while only 13% are men. “Other or unknown” is written next to the last 8%. Also in the study, it says that 392 of the almost 12,000 clients were victims of trafficking.

Most of the time, the person who did it was known to the victim—25% were family members, 23% were acquaintances, 15% were partners, and 7% were spouses. Only 4% of the time were the culprits strangers. The study shows that 23% of offenders were not made public.

Before the gathering, at 3:40 p.m., eight people were in the Richmond County Jail on charges of assaulting a woman. On top of that, one of them is charged with a misdemeanor crime of domestic abuse.

Most of those people are facing other charges, and two of them are being charged of sex crimes.

Cano Ernesto Sanchez is also charged with many other crimes, including first-degree murder. He’s been locked up since July 6, 2022. It is also being said that Nicholas McCrary is guilty of several other crimes, including trying to kill someone in the first degree.

People who are being charged with a crime are thought to be innocent until they are found guilty in court.

Chief Deputy Jay Childers says that since January 1, the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office has been called to 134 calls about domestic violence.

As of January, Maj. Hudson Chitwood said that the Hamlet Police Department had received 72 calls about crimes involving domestic abuse.

Chitwood said that the department has to file reports on cases of domestic violence “whether or not probable cause for an arrest is established.” These records are included.

According to the N.C. Coalition on Domestic abuse, 35.2% of women and 30.3% of men in the state experience domestic abuse and stalking at some point in their lives. Chitwood did not have any numbers that were broken down by gender.

A study from the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation says that 135 murders were caused by DV in 2023, which is 17.4% more than the previous year.

Guilford had the most (15), Cumberland had the most (12), and Mecklenburg and Forsyth each had 10 people.

Since 2009 (99), the number of murders linked to DV seems to have slowly gone up, reaching a high point of 148 in 2022.

From 2019 to 2023, Richmond County had four of these kinds of murders: two in 2020, one in 2021, and one in 2022.

The report says that 78 of the deaths were women and 57 were women. Out of the criminals, 96 were men and 32 were women.

The report says that six of the victims had protective orders in place before the murder, and three of those orders were still in effect.

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