{"id":19933,"date":"2026-07-02T19:14:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T19:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=19933"},"modified":"2026-07-02T19:14:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T19:14:42","slug":"off-the-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/02\/off-the-ground\/","title":{"rendered":"Off the Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Donald Perryman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D.<\/p>\n

The Truth Contributor<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0Every teenager isn\u2019t bad, every parent don\u2019t raise their kids to go out and do what they did \u2014 but I just hope situations like these open our eyes\u2026 \u2013 <\/em>Cierra Wells<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

He was limping toward her, dazed and bleeding. A 16-year-old boy, in the middle of what had been the Old West End community festival minutes before. Cierra Wells, a nurse for eight years who had been fundraising for her daughters\u2019 cheerleading squad, saw him and went to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cMa\u2019am, please, please, I don\u2019t want to die. Please keep me alive,\u201d he kept saying.<\/p>\n

She asked his name and his age, holding his attention and his life together with her voice and her hands, while keeping her eyes on her own daughters somewhere in the chaos. That is what June 6, 2026, asked of Cierra Wells. She answered.<\/p>\n

Getting Up<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wells was not alone. Whitney Beachum, a nurse practitioner who had been eating from a food truck with friends when the shooting started, hit the ground like everyone else. When it stopped, she got up.<\/p>\n

She spotted two wounded individuals and approached a police officer. \u201cHey, I am a medical professional. Do you want my help?\u201d He said yes. She got gloves and went to work \u2014 assessing wounds, applying pressure, moving from victim to victim alongside law enforcement. \u201cIn those moments,\u201d Beachum said, \u201cyou don\u2019t care who someone is or what they look like. You\u2019re just trying to help them and save their life.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is not a press conference or an ordinance. That is Toledo \u2014 getting up off the ground before anyone in authority said what to do next.<\/p>\n

The Man Who Ran In<\/strong><\/p>\n

Matt Killam, chief External Relations Officer for MetroParks Toledo, lives on Robinwood \u2014 a few blocks from the Agnes Reynolds Jackson Arboretum. His fianc\u00e9e\u2019s daughter was in that same crowd when the shooting started. Killam ran in, found her hiding in a garage just north of the arboretum, and got her out.<\/p>\n

In the days that followed, Killam\u2019s team did what they had already spent a year doing \u2014 coordinating hour by hour with the chief of police, the chief of fire, the head of EMS, the mayor\u2019s office, and the county commissioners to make sure that when Toledo gathered again at Watershed Weekend, it gathered safely. Tens of thousands showed up without incident.<\/p>\n

Killam also said something that deserves to be on record. Talking about the two 20-year-olds whose private grievance became Toledo\u2019s public nightmare, he said: \u201cThey are still children to me. We have all failed them.\u201d That is not the language of someone who manages the relationship between MetroParks and the Toledo it serves from a distance. It is the language of someone who understands that the boy Cierra Wells held together on June 6, and the boys who fired the shots, came from the same city, and that city has not yet done enough for either of them.<\/p>\n

What They Catalyzed<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wells and Beachum did not write the mayor\u2019s new safety ordinance. They did not double the police presence for the Fourth of July or create the special event safety zones. But what they did in the immediate aftermath of June 6 \u2014 getting off the ground and helping without being asked \u2014 showed Toledo what its response needed to look like.<\/p>\n

This Saturday, an estimated 100,000 people will gather at Promenade Park for Toledo\u2019s fireworks show. The city is doubling its police presence. The same Riverwalk that Killam\u2019s team built \u2014 no fences, no gates, no walls \u2014 built for everyone \u2014 will hold all of those who chose to show up.<\/p>\n

Last year, six people were killed over the Fourth of July weekend. Two of those homicides came just hours after the fireworks ended. This year, Toledo shows up anyway \u2014 because Wells got off the ground, because Beachum got off the ground, because Killam ran in. Their actions catalyzed an entire city.<\/p>\n

As Killam himself put it, \u201cgood activation pushes out the bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

All because we got off the ground.<\/p>\n

Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, PhD, at <\/em>drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D. The Truth Contributor \u00a0\u00a0Every teenager isn\u2019t bad, every parent don\u2019t raise their kids to go out and do what they did \u2014 but I just hope situations like these open our eyes\u2026 \u2013 Cierra Wells   He was limping toward her, dazed and bleeding. A 16-year-old boy, in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,252],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[354],"class_list":["post-19933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-opinion","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19933"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19935,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19933\/revisions\/19935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19933"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=19933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}