Community violence intervention groups, local organizations and law enforcement partners joined forces on Saturday to send a message that it’s time to put an end to gun violence in Detroit.

Hundreds attended the annual Silence the Violence rally on the city’s east side. One of the event’s participants, Latina Mack, is a member of the community violence intervention group Force Detroit.

“I combine myself with Force Detroit to be able to help these kids, to give them the resources, to provide opportunities for them, to do things that they have never done before,” Mack said.

In 2023, her 17-year-old son, Elijah, was killed in an accidental shooting.

“My son’s death prompted me to want to do more. I just didn’t want anybody else to go through what I go through on a regular basis. Sometimes that’s the biggest thing, just showing up and letting people know I’m here.” Mack said.

Organizers say the rally and march are about honoring those lost to gun violence, bringing awareness to ongoing struggles and showing support to those who need it.

“It’s very, very important to the survivors, and it’s more than just the survivors as it relates to the families, but the whole community is surviving this stuff because they seen it,” Dujuan Zoe Kennedy, executive director, Force Detroit, said.

Kennedy added that when it comes to gun violence, if you can predict it, you can prevent it.

“We know the root causes of violence are poverty. We know the root causes of violence are psychological, emotional and mental wellness. So we have to provide those things, we have to be there, we have to be trauma-informed and we have to operate and provide economic mobility,” Kennedy said.

One example of a community violence intervention success is Jordan Owens.

“I got a lot of good mentorship, and a lot of good guidance from them and I feel like I’m going down a better path,” Owens said.

The 16-year-old was arrested with a gun just a few years ago.

“I wasn’t necessarily beefing with people doing that, but people were in my neighborhood getting robbed, killed, hurt and I felt like I just needed protection at my age. I felt like I didn’t have nobody to protect me and I felt like I had to do it myself,” Owens said.

Now he realizes that’s not the case.

“It’s more to life than just all of this stuff in the neighborhoods and all of that. We all have the opportunity to change our lives and do better, and you just have to want that change for yourself.”

Owens has become an entrepreneur, starting both landscaping and car detailing services.

“I’d love to be a good community member, speaking to the youth and stuff like that, and doing more stuff like this. And I just want to go to college, continue with my businesses,” Owens said.

It would be a stretch to call the Seattle Mariners rivals of the Detroit Tigers, no matter how much Tigers fans booed Seattle first baseman Josh Naylor on Friday.

But the Tigers have played the Mariners a lot since the beginning of 2025, more than any other non-divisional opponent (12 games) except the Boston Red Sox. And that familiarity may be helping them extend their hot streak.

The Tigers beat the Mariners, 7-3, on Friday, June 5, at Comerica Park in Detroit. The win brought their win streak to four games after a 6-22 record in May left them 16 games under .500.

And two of the best performances of the night came from two players very familiar with what Seattle has to offer – starting pitcher Framber Valdez and right fielder Kerry Carpenter.

Framber Valdez beats a former rival

Tigers manager A.J. Hinch didn’t seem convinced that the Tigers are all that familiar with the Mariners, with the exception of one key player.

“Except for the playoff series last year, we don’t play them a ton. Framber has,” he said “He’s played them his whole career a lot, and so he’s got a lot of history with that lineup, especially at the top with [Randy] Arozarena and Julio [Rodríguez] and J.P. [Crawford], and so he had to battle and he did.”

Valdez has done well pitching through adversity lately, with Friday’s game adding to a tally of impressive starts in 2026. He only got through five innings, but Valdez pitched through the rain while allowing scoreless innings in the fourth and fifth with two runners on, both times representing game-tying opportunities for the Mariners.

“I wasn’t putting my head down. I was ready to go as deep as I could, and it was in my mind, ‘I’m not going to let him score,’” he said. “When situations needed a big time, I stepped up.”

Friday’s win was Valdez’s sixth start this season of at least five innings allowing one run or fewer, as his clutch pitching helped keep a powerful Seattle team (fourth in the American League in slugging percentage at .398) from doing much damage through the first half of the game.

Valdez’s win makes him 8-4 all-time against the Mariners over 17 regular-season starts (16 of them with the Houston Astros), sporting a 3.43 ERA against Seattle, in line with his career average. His team has won five of his last six games against the Mariners, with Valdez showing out against his old divisional rival for the first time as a Tiger.

THE GAME: Tigers stay hot, beat Mariners 7-3 off Carpenter and Torkelson HRs

The lefty said his familiarity with the lineup helped him on Friday, but that it wasn’t the only thing that led to a win.

“The familiarity helps a lot, but at the end of the day, I gave myself an opportunity to study what I already know and improve the things that I didn’t know,” he said. “At the end of the day, I’m just doing my best and giving my best on the field.”

Kerry Carpenter mashes vs Mariners

Carpenter’s third-inning home run against Seattle starter Bryan Woo was his seventh of the year and ninth of his career against the Mariners, including the two home runs he hit against them in last year’s ALDS.

With those two postseason home runs included, Carpenter has more home runs against the Mariners than any other opponent.

“It’s weird because their pitchers are so good and they strike me out a lot, and I happened to get [Woo] a little bit,” he said.

Carpenter finished 1-for-4 with two strikeouts, but his two-run home run in the third brought the Tigers a 3-1 lead. In his three games since returning from the injured list, Carpenter already has five hits, four RBIs and two home runs, providing pop to a Tigers lineup that suffered a power outage through May.

“[Carpenter] hits the fly ball that carries out of the ballpark, which was a really big blow early just because it was so hard to get the big hit against [Woo],” Hinch said after the game, also praising second baseman Gleyber Torres for his 3-for-4 day. “You want to see what those two guys are worth to this lineup, they contributed in great fashion.”

Torres had the most impressive day at the plate with his two-RBI double in the seventh extending Detroit’s lead to 5-2, while first baseman Spencer Torkelson’s eighth-inning home run ended up the finishing touch on a solid win. But on a night where every Tigers starter recorded at least one hit, it was Carpenters big fly in the third that got the offense going.

The Tigers get five more games against the Mariners this season (two over the next two days to finish out the home series), and Carpenter is looking forward to all of them – and he has a reason for that beyond his historic success against Seattle.

“I love playing them here, but I love playing them in Seattle, too. My wife’s family is from up there, so it’s always fun to be out there.”

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You can reach Christian at cromo@freepress.com.