Mapping the Dead: Gun Fatalities Since Sandy Hook

A chilling infographic by The Huffington Post shows 2,243 Americans have been killed with guns in the 98 days that had passed as of Friday since the massacre in Newtown, Conn. The deaths appear by name and location, and links are provided to the news articles that reported them.

Contributor Jason Cherkis tells the stories of five victims of gun violence and the families that lost them over the past decade. Nine-year-old Devin Aryal of Oakdale, Minn., was shot in the head for no apparent reason by a man with a history of mental problems firing at cars on a street. Aleya Criswell, a 21-year-old who was gunned down in her hometown of Fort Smith, Ark., in late December, appeared in a vision to her cousin, Marquita Thomson. “She told me to tell her mama that she loves her, that’s she’s okay,” Thomson recalled.

In May 2012, Melanie Colon, a 22-year-old mother, was found 15 minutes from her Philadelphia home in a wooded area behind an apartment building with six bullet wounds in her face. She had gone missing a few days earlier. The man with whom she was last seen has not been seen since. Al Roberson, 61, sometimes thinks he sees the face of his 26-year-old son Cory peering out at him from the window in the room where he was slain in Bakersfield, Calif., in March 2011.

Jenny Heyman recently drove 45 miles to the Southern California graveyard where her son Chris is buried. He was 17 when he was killed. The headstone lies flat on the ground. She regularly clears away debris and waxes the marble so she can once again see her son’s face engraved in the stone. “I needed to see him,” Heyman said. “It calms me down to be with him.”

Each story can be read here.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.