Friday night. June 19.
An evening that the seniors in the Niagara Falls High School Class of 2026 had waited a long time for.
But after the teens left the Niagara Falls Convention Center on Old Falls Street, things took a dangerous turn.
In the early morning hours of Saturday, June 20, Falls Police patrol officers began tracking a group of teens as they moved through the city. The first reports were vandalism in Gluck Park. Cars driving on the wet grass, leaving behind deep divots.
From there, the cars and teens moved to Legends Park on 11th Street. Then, to a gathering in the parking lot behind the Kalfas School on Beech Avenue.
At 3:20 a.m., police responded to a call of “shots heard” in the area of Centre Court. Responding patrol officers found nothing at the scene, no victims, no spent shell casings and no signs of property damage.
Less than an hour later. police dispatchers received a call from Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center. Doctors in ER1 were treating a 17-year-old male with a gunshot wound to his hand.
The wound was a graze, not life-threatening.
As Criminal Investigation Division detectives began an investigation of the shooting, they located a Nissan Armada in the 3300 block alley of Royal Avenue. They found a bullet hole in the driver’s side rear door, and the door window was shattered.
The vehicle had reportedly been in the area of Centre Avenue when it was hit by gunfire. As investigators looked for a crime scene on Centre Avenue, they found a home at 1505 Centre Ave. where a front window had been hit by gunfire.
After the sun came up, around 9:20 a.m., officers were sent back to the Center Court neighborhood, where a resident in the 2909 block of Aaron Griffin Way told them she had awakened to find that her house had been hit and damaged by gunfire. The officers found a broken front window and a bullet lodged in a wall inside the home.
Searching outside the house, investigators located six 7.62 bullet casings in the roadway near the corner of Aaron Griffin Way and Calumet Avenue. That particular type of ammunition is most commonly used in an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle.
The same rifle is toted by troops in any number of war zones around the world.
The gunplay prompted Niagara Falls City Council Chair Brian Archie, who lives in the Centre Court neighborhood, to pen an open letter to the community.
“I am writing to our city following yet another evening marked by gunfire in the Center Court community,” Archie explained. “This past Thursday, which should have been a night of joy and celebration for our young people, turned chaotic. Families in Center Court experienced bullets entering their homes through windows and walls, invading the very places where they should feel safest.”
The city lawmaker said his neighbors asked him the same question, over and over, “What are we doing to stop this?”
“We know these things are happening,” Archie said. “How do we talk to our young people about carrying weapons, about this behavior. Education and community centers alone won’t fix this.”
The council chair said he believes that while initiatives like GIVE (Gun Involved Violence Elimination) and SNUG (GUNS spelled backwards) work “to interrupt cycles of violence and engage those at high risk, we must go further.”
“We need a greater focus on preventing illegal firearms from entering our neighborhoods,” Archie said. “Additionally, we must rebuild communication across generations. Many adults now choose silence out of fear, leaving our youth to navigate life alone.”
Intelligence sources confirm to the Gazette that much of the most recent gun violence in the city involves “ groups of juveniles” who, they say, fear no deterrence in their use of firearms. Recent changes in New York State law have raised the age for charging juveniles as adults, resulting in teens “committing adult crimes and being treated like children who just made a mistake.”
“Ending this violence requires more than enforcement; it requires relationships, accountability, and courage,” Archie said. “Our young people are watching, and I still believe that when neighbors choose to become a village again, healing is possible. We must all do our part.”
Asked where these new community conversations can begin, Archie suggested, “They start where we are, in our homes.”