PORTSMOUTH, Va. — The concerns for Renyatta Banks started earlier this April.
“It really increased when someone was killed the next block up. And it's just so normalized, and there were children outside playing and it’s 10 a.m.," she said.
Banks, the executive director of the Wesley Community Service Center, said the deadly shooting on the 1200 block of Duke Street — less than a quarter mile from the Wesley Center — is the first instance she felt the community hub needed to heighten its security presence.
That shooting came one week after three pit bulls killed a woman on Atlanta Avenue, similarly, around the corner from the community services center.
On April 24, a day after their weekly pantry service, Banks describes how a man became confrontational inside the center, prompting an altercation where staff had to step in between them.
"Finally made it to the car, after knocking on my window. But I turned to come home down George Washington [Highway] and realized I did not have my phone. Thought I would be good to go back, but saw that he was in a blind spot," she said, before asking a nearby maintenance worker to walk her inside the building.
Banks soon called 911 after describing the man lunging at her and trying to enter the Wesley Center.
"The guy was charging at me as if trying to get to me," she said.
According to information from officials with the Portsmouth Police Department, "A person was denied entry; no one was restrained or prevented from leaving the property."
The confluence of those three incidents in back-to-back fashion over several weeks led Banks to temporarily pause the Wesley Center's operations for the last week of April. That pause includes pantry services, which serve as many as hundreds of people on a given week.
"The Wesley Community Service Center has served the community for 87 years. Sadly due to the violence we will have to scan our guests when entering our pantry," a statement posted on Facebook reads.
“I was just really concerned. Sometimes in these communities they don’t want to snitch or tell who did anything," she says.
Operations will resume next week, according to Banks, after they take a moment to think about and make adjustments to more safely deliver the pantry services to their clients.
Banks said this could include reducing the number of people allowed in the pantry at a given time, and possibly "scanning" with a portable metal detector the guests who enter the pantry.