CINCINNATI — The Hub, a bar in Over-the-Rhine, “in conjunction with Talbert House and the City of Cincinnati,” is hosting mental health services for employees in the OTR service industry who may need it after nine people were shot in the early morning hours Sunday morning.
The services will be provided at The Hub at 5:30 p.m. on Monday for employees affected by gun violence, according to a tweet from the bar’s account.
“We just went from COVID restrictions to a entire 180 and full open and now escalated gun violence in the area we live and work in,” the bar tweeted.
On Sunday, Cincinnati councilmember Jan-Michelle Lemon Kearney tweeted that The Hub OTR owner, Lindsey Swadner, proposed ideas on how the city can help, saying she was “on it!”
Mayor Aftab Pureval called the shooting “completely and totally unacceptable” during a Sunday afternoon press conference. He said this shooting and those in recent months and years are not like the shootings of years past that were “concentrated around the drug trade.”
Instead, Pureval said the city needs the community’s support and help in resolving differences without gunfire.
Pureval mentioned conflict resolution and mental health training as a focus of city resources. Swadner said mental health should be at the forefront of the conversation.
“If people are going to have to experience this, we got to go all the way,” she said. “We’ve got to give them the mental health treatment that they need because this is just going to compound. People are going to mentally be unwell because of this,”
Surveillance footage from The Hub showed people taking cover and running to safety when they heard the gunfire. On Sunday, Swadner said violent crimes are becoming nothing new to the area.
OTR shooting: Surveillance footage shows crowds near The Hub run after shots fired
“I can name three I’ve seen in the last month,” Swadner said. “I had a gun pulled out on me a couple of weeks ago.”
More surveillance footage from Matt Euson showed the scene from outside 1302 Main Street, as people ran from gunfire. One woman appears to fall as she tries to run to safety.
The entire city of Cincinnati saw both shootings and homicides rise in 2020 and 2021, but in June, a look at crime statistics in OTR showed that Cincinnati police report a 45% decline in shootings in the area in the first six months of 2022.
Nine people were shot and wounded in OTR early Sunday morning after two groups involved in a physical fight escalated to gunfire near Main and 13th Street. All victims wounded in the incident were treated and released by 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, police said.
Cincinnati police are still searching for two shooters from the incident, though they have not provided any information on possible suspects. They are asking anyone that may have witnessed this incident or has additional information to contact the CPD Criminal Investigations Section at 513-352-3542.
OTR business owner speaks out after mass shooting
