Residents rally for peace in Huntington Station

Dozens gathered Saturday in Huntington Station, locked arms in a circle and prayed to promote peace in a community troubled by a spate of violence, including the stabbing death of a high school senior.

"Sometimes we all get focused on the negative and the violence, but we have some great kids here, who have become great people," Crystal E. White, one of three organizers, said after the peace rally at the Tri Community and Youth Agency. "So, I have to keep that light burning about moving forward and change."

The gathering was the first of planned monthly meetings, called "Pieces to Peace," planned throughout the community leading up to the "Think, Feel & Choose Peace Rally" in June, organizers said.

White said the idea was born when community youth asked what they could do because "everybody's so angry" after residents crowded into Town Hall last month after the stabbing death of Walt Whitman High School senior Maggie Rosales.

"Let's promote the peace," said White, who also works at the youth center, to the youth.

Children marched into the center Saturday carrying signs they made, such as "STOP THE VIOLENCE," and recited the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., organizers said.

Members of the Suffolk County Police Department also attended and told residents about a neighborhood watch meeting at the South Huntington Library on Wednesday.

Huntington Station resident Adam Saalfield, 21, was arrested Wednesday and charged in Rosales' Oct. 12 stabbing.

That crime was the tipping point. It was the fourth homicide in the community in about a year that police had considered unsolved.

The Rev. Bernadette Watkins, another organizer, prayed for victims' families Saturday.

"The goal of this is to bring the community together in love and harmony, so that we can raise our children in love and harmony," she said.