The Bay Area has experienced a number of shootings where the suspected shooter were all young people. In November, gunfire rang out at Oakland’s Skyline High School and San Jose’s Westfield Mall and Burton High in San Francisco in December.

NBC Bay Area sat down with a group of young people in San Francisco, both survivors and perpetrators to ask them what was driving this gun violence amongst youth, the impact of social media when it comes to guns and what can be done.

High school teenagers, Ziggy Brown, Xavier Ballard, Terronnie Fields and Keenan Erwin, have attended programs at San Francisco’s United Playaz, a violence and prevention youth development program.

The 18-year-old Erwin was shot in December at Burton High in the city’s Portola neighborhood. He says there was a dispute with another student and that student shot him. Keenan’s femur was shattered.

“It was just crazy, hearing it happen to people and like not even thinking it could happen to you. What hurts more than that bullet was hearing your mama cry thinking that was her last time. Hearing you, seeing you breathe on this earth and hearing her cry,” he said.

NBC Bay Area asked them about the problem of gun violence amongst youth.

“No matter where you are, you could really just run into the wrong person that day,” Brown said.

“It could be anybody any age because it’s such a problem, like we have kids running around thinking that guns are cool to have,” Ballard said.

Brown and Ballard thought it was cool. In December 2024, the two ended up in juvenile hall for theft, robbing other people with a BB gun at Serramonte Mall. Ballard spent a week in a half in juvie. Ziggy three weeks.

“It’s such a bad mistake and it was so like dumb,” Ballard said.

Brown talked about a question his lawyer asked him.

“He asked me, ‘Why did you do that? He’s like, he spoke real to me. He’s like, Why did you do that dumb** s***? You’re speaking to me with intelligence. Why did you do that?’ I told him I didn’t love myself. I didn’t care about myself enough,” he said.

In 2021, gun violence replaced car crashes as the leading cause of death for children in the U.S. and has remained the leading killer, disporportionately affecting communities of color.

Social media is also having an impact on them.

“I feel like the social media is like it’s the humiliation part,” Ballard said. “It makes it to where people want to prove a point. Cause like for example, if somebody were to get like beat up or something and they seen it on the internet, then it’s like, okay, now I have to like get back.”

There is no data directly linking social media to crime, but research suggests social media is an accelerant. Erin Grinshteyn, an associate dean and professor at the University of San Francisco, studies gun violence as a public health issue.

“Social media has the capacity to disseminate gun violence information far more broadly than if you’re just exposed within your specific community,” Grinshteyn said. “What we’re seeing is that people who are exposed to gun violence in their community have negative mental health consequences. I think often times people think that a gun will make them safer, and all the research shows that having access to a firearm puts you in far more danger.”

A coyote recently stunned observers by swimming to Alcatraz, braving the treacherous waters surrounding the notorious former prison island off the coast of San Francisco in plain view of a tourist recording video.

The coyote in question is thought to be the first ever to reach Alcatraz, now a tourist attraction, in that manner. While it’s uncertain why the animal doggy-paddled there, the consensus is that the creature probably came from San Francisco – about 1.25 miles away – or other islands near Alcatraz where coyotes have been spotted.

Aidan Moore of Alcatraz City Cruises published clips of the coyote video on his Facebook account on 11 January. “A coyote swim to Alcatraz from the main island!” wrote Moore, who later told the news outlet SFGate that he got the videos from a tourist who approached him while at work. “The most exciting thing to happen here in ages! That’s a mile and a quarter swim!”

The clips depict the coyote swimming all by its lonesome in the San Francisco Bay, bobbing its head as it determinedly headed toward Alcatraz. The coyote eventually emerged on to the island’s rocky shore, cutting a bedraggled figure as water dripped from the animal’s body, which seemingly shivered with the Golden Gate Bridge looming in the background, according to one of the videos.

Moore said to SFGate that he called in the sighting to rangers at Alcatraz, which is under the jurisdiction of the US national park service. But it had disappeared by the time the rangers went looking for the coyote, and the canine’s fate was unclear.

SFGate reported that a spokesperson for the Golden Gate national recreation area – which oversees Alcatraz – confirmed the authenticity of the coyote sighting. The spokesperson, however, could not elaborate on what motivated the coyote to go there.

Citing what it described as a self-taught naturalist who has been documenting local coyote behavior for two decades, San Francisco’s CBS affiliate reported on Tuesday that the animal may have been seeking out new territory amid interspecies population pressure.

“This one was probably pushed around by other territorial owners and decided that he could make this trip,” Janet Kessler told the outlet, adding that coyotes have been in and around San Francisco for generations. “So, he attempted it, and he made it.”

Both Kessler and Moore remarked on the coyote’s evidently worn state. “He didn’t look like he was in very good condition, which I’m not surprised by given the harrowing experience,” Moore told SFGate.

Kessler, meanwhile, said to CBS: “He can barely make it. He’s depleted. He is shivering. He is cold.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the coyote after it was recorded getting to Alcatraz. Nonetheless, Kessler noted to CBS that the coyote had resources on the island with which to survive, including banana slugs, mice, rats, birds and puddles of rainwater.

“They are survivalists,” Kessler said to the outlet of coyotes in general. “That’s why they continue to expand.”

The federal government shut down its maximum-security prison on Alcatraz in 1963 after nearly 30 years in operation.

Some of its most infamous prisoners included the mob boss Al Capone, bootlegger George “Machine Gun” Kelly and Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger. The frigid, rough waters surrounding Alcatraz lent to it a reputation of being virtually inescapable.

The prison was later reopened as a public museum that attracts more than 1 million visitors annually.

Sooji Nam reports on a phone booth opening a line of communication between Democrats in San Francisco and Republicans in Texas.

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