Adrianna walks down an empty street next to Dineen Park with her dog.
She grew up in Milwaukee near 25th and Brown but says she doesn’t plan on being here much longer because of the negativity she feels. “You can’t live a happy life, here. If you’re doing good, you know, people don’t like it… they just kill [you] or take what [you’ve] got. It’s sad, you know, very, very sad.”
The 22-year-old is staying with her mother, right now, and says they often hear gunshots in their neighborhood. Because of this, Adrianna says, most of the time, she just stays inside the house.
“Last month it was, I don’t know, me and my nephew was in the house and, I don’t know, somebody just got to shooting. And my niece was there too and I thought she was outside with the dog and it was, it was just crazy.”
Why is she still here, then? “I don’t know. I ask myself that every day.”
Adrianna, who works at St. John’s On The Lake, said she just received a promotion to front-desk receptionist after only being there for about four months. But that’s, certainly, not the end of the road for her; if anything, it’s just the beginning. “I plan on going to school to be a nurse practitioner,” she says. “When I do move, that will be my home town – wherever I do go – and I will go to school there.”
“All you can do is pray for Milwaukee cause I’m pretty sure it’s not like this anywhere else.”
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