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  Christina Wagner  Joe Coleman |
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Smooth sounds are a passion for Christina Wagner. Her new album "Dolce" -- meaning soft -- comes out this weekend. But these past few days have been anything but -- in fact it's been downright hard.
"The whole time I was shaking because I was so angry," says Wagner. She and her friends were robbed at a going away party in Riverside. Four men burst in on the group of nearly a dozen, brazenly firing off a shot.
"I was kind of shocked and I was sitting there kind of like, 'What's going on?' And he shot a round off into the ceiling and then we all got down," says Wagner.
A short walk away, Joe Coleman knows the feeling. A cigarette on his stoop ended with him looking down the barrel of a gun.
"Just two guys walked up with guns,? explains Coleman. ?And they were like, 'Give me your money.' and I was like, 'I don't have any.'"
"You can consider this crimes of opportunity," says Ken Jefferson of the Jacksonville Sheriff?s Office. Jefferson says thieves target young people -- like those who pack Riverside -- because they can.
"They're getting people, young people, who have their guard down who are not thinking about anything but the present and they're taking advantage of it," says Jefferson.
And while her music is soft, Christina Wagner's message is firm. Next month she's planning a crime awareness rally -- fighting back for the neighborhood she loves.
"Everybody I know lives here. We have so much fun and it's always been a kind of like a little sanctuary and I don't want that to be taken away," says Wagner.
Wagner says her rally is tentatively scheduled to be held at Fuel Coffeehouse on November 23rd at 7 p.m.
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 Created: 10/19/2004 9:54:31 PM Updated: 10/20/2004 2:05:26 PM Suggest News Tips & Story Leads Submit Video & Pictures |
First Coast News Staff
