East Lansdowne healing event held for community to honor family killed in shooting, house fire
EAST LANSDOWNE, Pa. - A community healing event was held at East Lansdowne Elementary Saturday, banding together in memory of the Le family.
Mayor Majovie Bland, the Red Cross and William Penn School District organized the event in hopes of bringing the community closer to healing following the deadly shooting and fire that claimed the lives of two devoted parents Britni McLaughlin Le, Xu Le and their three children on February 7.
The school gym transformed into a resource center, offering trauma and grief support, mental health services and family games and activities.
"A lot of hurt is going on in our community and I think some of us has never experienced that kind of hurt on that kind of level and what we wanted to do was bring back a sense of community," said Joi Hopkins, Board Director for William Penn School District. "All these people are coming here to say we love this community, all the people here to say hey, we got something here. So this is awesome."
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Deputy Chief Steve Castellano of the East Lansdowne Fire Department said it was a life-changing call for first responders as well.
"We stood by for approximately 45 minutes wanting to provide support to the community and being unable to do so because of an active shooter situation that was occurring that day," said Deputy Chief Castellano. "It’s not often that we have to respond to a scene where we’re not able to provide a support that we normally provide upfront, and that we had to stand back and let law enforcement do their job so we could essentially safely do our job."
Art educator Taiye Oladapo had the family’s youngest child Xavier Le, 10, in her class the last two and a half years.
She proudly displayed his last piece of artwork at the end of the table where children were invited to be creative with works inspired by Xavier and his two sisters Natalya, 17, and Nakayla,13.
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"Down at the end is a piece of his last artwork that he created before he passed. We were working on Kente cloth designs, and he applied it to a tennis shoe or sneaker," said Oladapo. "He was a really cool kid, very quiet, but still expressive. He really loved the arts, engineering. He was always creating and so that’s what I remember most about Xavier Le."
Desiree Murphy-Morrissey is the Founding Director and CEO of Murphy’s Giving Market and said the event was not only tragic, but traumatizing to the community. She said, back in 2001, her home was destroyed in a fire and prompted her to open the nonprofit tackling food insecurity in the community.
"So that’s why I started Murphy’s Market because of a fire, so when this incident happens, I immediately went back into that mode of how can I support because I’ve been there before," said Murphy-Morrissey. "One of the ways we best support families is with food access. We are here, we are still united because of this event and in spite of this event."