NEWBURGH, N.Y. -- "We have to break this cycle," pleaded Paula Cook-Wright, now a young widow. "If we don't, it's going to be a hundred more, a thousand more if they don't stop, because these people feel like it's OK to get away with murder."
Paula says her 10-year-old son has had trouble sleeping ever since the night of March 25. That’s the night Paula’s husband, 51-year-old Glenton Wright, was shot and killed.
"He had to get out of the car and walk past his dead father laying on the ground," she said.
Wright is another victim of the gun violence that has plagued the city; his killer is still on the loose.
Cook-Wright says that in Newburgh, the code "snitches get stitches" is what is pushing crime up and keeping criminals free. So she says people need to step up and come forward.
"They have to speak," she said. "They have to tell, because if it's not my family sitting here today mourning, going through his now, it's going to be them going through it."
TWC News caught up with the young widow at a recent meeting about how to stop the violence. She said the answer to Newburgh’s crime problem starts early and in the home.
“There’s a world outside of Newburgh," Cook-Wright said. "And show your kids that world; show them it’s not just the corners, selling drugs and fighting each other.”
Paula’s twin sister Paulette pleads for justice for her sister and her family.
"You guys need to put down these guns, these young guys around here," she cried. "This is not the answer. It’s not the answer to this."
Until something changes, Paula says there will be more like her -- mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, whose lives will be torn apart in the split-second it takes to pull a trigger.
“I thought he was coming home that night and he didn’t, he didn’t come home," Cook-Wright said. "I’m hurt. I was waiting on him to come home. He’s gone; he’s never coming home.
"Do you know how I feel inside? Hurt, very bad. I don’t know how I’m going to get over this. I don’t know when I’m going to get over this.”
Paula says she wants to do everything she can to help bring attention to this issue, and to take back Newburgh's streets. But for the sake of her children, she says she is planning to move out of the city.
In part two of our series "Newburgh's Crime Crisis," we’ll ride the streets of Newburgh with a veteran police officer to find out what cops are doing to try to fight the violence.