The organizers of a “stop the violence” rally and prayer vigil held Thursday night at a church in Pittsburgh’s St. Clair neighborhood got all the details right.

They lined the maroon-carpeted altar steps of The Lighthouse Cathedral with a row of 39 white votive candles, their flaming wicks replaced with electric bulbs. Multiple singers belted out hymns. A succession of preachers invoked the light of faith.

“There’s a lot going on this city … but you’re here and we’re here,” said Rev. Eileen Smith, executive director of South Pittsburgh Coalition for Peace, which led the event. “We have to pray for our children. That’s the key to it.”

Organizers read the names, ages and hometowns of each of the 38 people who died a violent death this year in Allegheny County. Their somber roll call, which ran for more than five minutes, ended during its Facebook livestream with a 39th entry: a nameless man killed Sept. 12.

Another man also was not named: Anthony Taulton, the 16-year-old boy charged with stabbing three classmates during a violent scuffle just a day earlier inside Carrick High School.

The organizers didn’t need to spell out anything; the pall of Wednesday’s stabbing hung over the 90-minute event.

“I do extend my heart, my tears and my prayers to this community, a community that’s suffering yet again,” said Sister Barbara Finch from St. Paul of the Cross Retreat Center.

Others insisted the latest act of violence in the Pittsburgh area wouldn’t deter them from continuing to claw at the root causes of these attacks.

“We’re gonna keep doing what we’re doing — we’re Carrick,” said Rick Bigelow, South Pittsburgh Coalition for Peace’s program manager. “That’s what community does. That’s what brothers do. They answer when someone calls.”

Christ Kingdom Ministry Center’s Tyrone Watson — who didn’t appear to pause for a breath during an electrifying, six-minute-long prayer that he capped with booming calls of “Hallelujah!” — was the loudest of roughly a dozen religious, community and elected leaders who spoke to a crowd of about 40 people Thursday.

And the calls to end gun violence or mentor area teens, about 10 of whom filled the vigil’s front row, were the most reinforced message of the evening.

Mother recalls slaying of son, 11

But the night belonged to Amanda Mickle.

The South Side woman, 46, told those gathered at the vigil about the decade she’s weathered since an unknown gunman fatally shot her 11-year-old son, David, and injured David’s older brother, then 16.

“Someone just walked into my home and didn’t say a word. He just opened fire,” Mickle said. “It was every parent’s nightmare.”

She buried David on Nov. 14, 2015. Nine months later to the day, Mickle’s father — “my rock,” she called him — died.

After finalizing a divorce, Mickle remarried. Her second husband became abusive and beat her repeatedly. When the couple separated, Mickle learned she was pregnant — and soon became homeless.

“There’s been so many moments of depression, where I’ve wanted to take my own life — I thought I’d be better off dead, that nobody would miss me,” she told the vigil’s crowd. “The death of a child takes a tremendous part of you. Your child doesn’t just die. A part of you dies, too.”

Though much of the crowd walked out of the church’s central space, with its cavernous vaulted ceilings, by 8 p.m., Mickle lingered behind. But she didn’t talk about how gun violence unraveled her life.

Mickle talked about how things turned around. She met a man, Kevin, in group therapy.

“Not once did he pity me,” she told TribLive. “He saw my inner strength.”

The couple married four months ago. Mickle still knows tragedy; her daughter, Aubriella, died three years ago.

But Mickle talked about giving the young girl something that fate couldn’t take away. The daughter’s middle name — Davine — was a tribute, Mickle said, to the older brother she never knew.

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