"Laying on that ground, bleeding out. So many people around holding my chest. People I didn't know. I come from Kansas City so death is kind of hard out here, so I thought I was dying. I didn’t think of myself as surviving."

One hundred and twenty-six. That’s the number of people killed in Kansas City in 2016. Four years earlier in 2012, that number wasn’t much different. There were one hundred and eight homicides. In the beginning of that year, Wesley Hamilton was in danger of becoming lost in that massive statistic after he was unexpectedly shot outside his former girlfriend's apartment.