Summit addresses ways to cut youth violence in New Jersey Sunday, September 09, 2007 • BY SEUNG MIN KIM • Star-Ledger Staff Marques-Aquil Lewis admits that only four years ago he was part of the very problem that he now tirelessly works to solve. He was a criminal. The drive-by shooting death of his father in 1997 and abandonment by his mother, he said, drove him to live violently. "When you're hurting inside, you want someone else to hurt," Lewis said, following at a statewide summit at the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens yesterday to discuss ways to reduce youth violence. Lewis said he once committed robberies, got into violent fights and even attempted suicide. But after witnessing the killings of two friends, the 19-year-old decided to turn his life around, founding Da Youth Organization, an anti-violence group. "You have to speak their language," Lewis said. "You have to understand their culture and their lifestyle. I've been there, done that, so they're going to talk to me." About 300 people attended the "Victory over Violence" summit, and listened as seven young men and women from Newark, Franklin Township and Highland Park detailed their struggles. Many touched on the same themes during the three-hour conference: the need for greater parental responsibility and better cooperation between the community and government officials. State Attorney General Anne Milgram called juvenile crime in New Jersey an "epidemic" -- especially gun-related crime. "I've never seen the number of guns on the streets, the level of violence among youth, and the number of gangs," she said. Between 2001 and 2005, the juvenile crime rate increased 15 percent for murder, 22 percent for robbery and 15 percent for weapon possession, said Milgram, who hopes to deliver a comprehensive anti-violence initiative to Gov. Jon Corzine within two weeks. Yesterday's summit followed several high-profile murders in New Jersey in recent weeks. Two young men in Franklin Township were killed in separate incidents three days apart in July, and three college students were fatally shot execution-style on a Newark playground on Aug. 4. The most recent of the arrests in those cases came earlier this week, when the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office announced that two known members of the Bloods street gang were charged in the shooting death of Ammar Simmons, 18, of Franklin Township. Fabian Austin, 18, of Franklin, and an unnamed 17-year-old New Brunswick boy, who is accused of shooting Simmons in the back on July 15 at the township's Little League complex, were charged with first-degree murder, Prosecutor Wayne J. Forrest said. The issue of gang violence penetrating New Jersey -- in both cities and suburbs -- was a frequent topic at the conference, which included comments from Paula Dow, Essex County Prosecutor; Weysan Dun, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Newark office and the mayors of Irvington, Willingboro and Franklin Township in Somerset County. "We have to get people to understand that there are positive youth out there who are willing to do something about this disease," Lewis said. "And it's a disease, because it's something that can be cured." Seung Min Kim may be reached at skim@starledger.com or (908) 429-9925. © 2007 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with permission.