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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In the last 24 hours, the Kansas City Police Department has responded to four homicides, prompting Mayor Quinton Lucas to address the issue.

“We’ve had violence before. What we’re not used to is a random Tuesday, in early April, seeing this volume of violence, this many homicides,” Lucas said. “You have a tragedy of a child who was killed, you have tragedies on the streets, a late-night house party.”

On Tuesday, tragedy struck Northeast Middle School where a student died from his injuries after he was stabbed in a fight.

“It shows just how important prevention is, you know. You’ve got to make sure that you’re preventing a child from carrying a knife in and hurting somebody else,” Lucas said.

Lucas said he plans to meet with the Kansas City Public Schools superintendent to discuss conflict resolution among youth and teens.

Kansas City police also worked three other homicides Tuesday and Wednesday.

“Enforcement is vital, but it is also clear that investment through youth mental health and reducing the volume of illegally trafficked and obtained weapons needs our focus,” Lucas tweeted.

The four homicides put the city at over 40 for the year.

“My office received from Children’s Mercy a plan for how we can expand youth mental health and trauma response services in Kansas City. We hope to fully fund that request through the American Rescue Plan,” Lucas continued.

Lucas added that the city hopes to continue efforts to reduce the amount of illegal firearms on the streets.

“We also hope, contingent on state law, to continue our work with federal authorities to get recidivists off our streets and to reduce the supply of illegally trafficked firearms, primarily handguns, in our community,” Lucas said.

KCPD is still searching for the suspects in three of the four the shootings. A Northeast Middle School student has been charged in the stabbing.

Cheryl St. John was sitting in her car outside that Wabash Avenue home. She’s hoping and praying the person killed was not her nephew, who she hasn’t heard from. She said the recent homicides in the city are tragic.

“We need to stop the violence. We need to stop all of this. This is just nonsense. Life is too short. We cannot have this going on anymore,” she said.