ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Violence in the city of Rochester is continuing as police say a 41-year-old man was shot multiple times on Melrose Street Tuesday afternoon. Officers say the man was transported to Strong Memorial Hospital with what were first thought to be life-threatening injuries. He's now expected to survive.

The shooting follows a violent weekend in the city, where at least eight people were shot, with one killed.

Monroe County Legislator Mercedes Vazquez Simmons recently shared her thoughts on the historic level of violence in the city.

She spoke about putting all options on the table, including calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to send in the National Guard for assistance

"I think we need to take an aggressive action,” Vazquez said. “As the weather gets warmer, we're going to see an increase of violence."

City officials say they have not considered calling in the National Guard at this time.

Some families are participating in the county legislator’s city soccer league, the Latino Youth Development Resource Center Summer Soccer League. 

The idea is to start talking about violence and how to resolve conflict at an early age. Vazquez Simmons reaches out to teens, schools age children and their families in District 22 that are hard hit by the violence. Some of the children say they are so fearful of the guns and criminals, they don’t sleep in, but rather under their beds.

“There's a lot of people here in our city that may have or may not have guns,” she said. “So we want to make sure that we're safe. But if you do know someone that has a gun, you talk to your parents about it, or your teachers.”

The league is open to teenagers and children as young as 3 years old. 

“These experiences with the violence become traumatic for them,” Rochester parent Ebony Stubbs said. “Traumatic in a way that maybe they won't talk about it now, but they physically see it.”

Stubbs is mom to three sons, including 8-year-old Marshawn and 9-year-old Ricky.

“But what happens couple years down the line when they don't have anybody, they never talked to anybody to express their feelings on what they saw, and they start acting out in such a way because they don't know how to get it out?” Stubbs said.

Many of the children there are coping with trauma. If they don’t directly witness a violent crime, they hear the gunfire. Daniel Cooper is 10.

“I hear sirens and police and stuff and gunshots,” Daniel said. “And it won’t let me go to sleep, so I pretend that I didn't hear anything and I just go to sleep. I hear it every night.”

Josiah Cooper is 14.

“It’s bad. I mean it’s really, really bad,” Josiah said. “I mean, especially where I live, it's super bad.”

“Some of the kids are sleeping under their beds because they're afraid their house is going to get shot at because your relative was impacted by it,” Vazquez Simmons said. “I mean, just to think about some of the fears that they've taken on. We shouldn't allow our children to live under these circumstances.”

The program encourages parent involvement.

”We need to work together to get gun violence to stop and stop killing our children and young people because they need to be living,” Rochester parent Aliya Cooper said.

Josiah says coming to the program helps him to make the right choices.

“Yeah, I’m trying to stay out of trouble [and] get my education,” he said. “Yeah, go to a good college and stuff like that. It’s very difficult. A lot of people you see doing other stuff like smoking and stuff. You see all that. And I try to avoid all that stuff like that.”

This program offers an opportunity to forget about the violence, or to talk about it.

“So we want to give them a little bit of normalcy with this program,” Vazquez Simmons said. “You know, you see, the kids are allowed to just be kids.”