Commissioners urge action after shootings in Seaboard and Gaston; Gaston council enacts emergency restrictions

Members of the Northampton County Board of Commissioners used the meeting's comment period to urge action after recent shootings in Seaboard and Gaston, citing injuries to children and a series of violent incidents in the county.

"We had two young people get shot, in Seaboard, North Carolina ... one, 7 years old and the other, 15," Commissioner Brown said, describing incidents in a Seaboard housing project that required the victims to be airlifted to medical centers. Brown said the shootings followed previous incidents in Seaboard and a separate wave of fatal shootings in the town of Gaston.

Brown said town leaders in Gaston convened an emergency meeting and adopted a local ordinance restricting children from being in the housing development after 8 p.m. without parental supervision. "They put into a ordinance that their kids cannot be out into the housing development after 8 without being chaperoned by parents because of the shootings," Brown said, and he commended the town for acting despite possible criticism.

Brown also praised Northampton County Sheriff Jack Smith for contracting county deputies to provide policing in Seaboard, where Brown said the town currently does not have a town police officer. Commissioners called for county coordination with municipal officials and for programs and recreational activities to give young people constructive outlets.

No formal county action or new county ordinance was taken at the meeting; commissioners described discussions with state Representative Rodney Pierce and urged continued vigilance and intergovernmental coordination on public-safety responses.