Trevon Bosley will be one of 50,000 people at the starting line of the TCS New York City Marathon on Sunday. But the motivation for his first 26.2 mile race is personal: to advocate for gun violence prevention.
In 2005, Bosley’s cousin Vincent Avant was shot and killed just down the street from his Chicago area home. Then in 2021, Bosley’s brother Terrell Bosley — an 18-year-old aspiring bass player — was shot and killed outside Lights of Zion Church in Chicago’s West Pullman neighborhood.
“It really shook up everything in the family,” Bosley said. The family stopped celebrating holidays and even listening to music. “We only started finding relief through doing prevention work.”
That work will deliver Bosley to the starting line at the foot of the Verrazano Bridge in Staten Island, New York. And now Bosley is raising funds and awareness for the gun control advocacy group March for Our Lives as part of Team Inspire — a group of 26 runners with varying levels of marathon experience — facilitated by New York Road Runners, which produces the marathon. Sunday’s 26.2 mile race comes less than one year after he picked up an interest in running.
Bosley and his family have dedicated their lives to stopping gun violence and helping loved ones of those lost to it. Bosley previously served as a mentor for Chicago’s Bold Resistance Against Violence Everywhere (B.R.A.V.E.), which organizes talent shows, basketball tournaments and other events. Through his work, he met with victims of the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting to share stories about members’ gun violence experiences in Chicago.
Aside from his full-time job as an electrical engineer, Bosley also serves as board co-chair for March For Our Lives, the youth-led nonprofit organization founded by Parkland students in the aftermath of the mass shooting that fights for gun legislation.
To help tackle gun violence in Chicago and beyond, March For Our Lives pushed for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a bill President Joe Biden signed into law in June 2022 that expanded federal background checks for individuals under 21, and efforts to improve mental and behavioral health services for communities. Bosley and the group also worked to pass an assault weapons ban in Illinois last year.
Between his community work and the trauma he experienced from gun violence hitting so close to home, Bosley said he started running to test his body and to find a release “as things just started to build up.”
“I needed something to bring me comfort and take my mind off of it,” he said. “I heard people talk about running, like that was relaxing for them and that helped them.” After running regularly, “it really started to clear my head and it was just doing positive things for me.”
Other members of Bosley’s family have used their grief to fuel action. His parents Pam and Tim Bosley co-founded a group called “Purpose Over Pain,” which provides support for parents who have lost children because of violence. Many members of the group try to find answers in their child’s case because “most cases are unsolved,” Bosley said, adding that his brother and cousin are among those cases. Bosley also has a brother named Terrez.
While rates of gun violence in Chicago have decreased in recent years, it’s still an ongoing problem. Data from the Chicago Police Department revealed the city’s gun violence and homicide rates dropped by 13% in 2023 to pre-pandemic levels. Still, that year marked the fifth-highest number of homicides, at 617, the city experienced since 2004.
Bosley said gun violence in Chicago stems from “a multitude of problems,” in Chicago, including a lack of funding in the city’s education system, a lack of workforce programs, and the infusion of guns from neighboring states like Indiana with more lax gun laws.
“Indiana is only a 15-minute drive,” he said. “So, we have all these other problems that we are trying to decrease in our community and now we have the influx of guns just flooding in. That’s created the gun violence that we see in Chicago.”
The peace Bosley finds from running is something he wants to bring to others. His next project through March For Our Lives will likely be implementing a mental wellness initiative to bring peace and relaxation days to communities dealing with gun violence by offering yoga, meditation and other stress-reducing activities.
With his schedule, busy with his job and gun violence prevention work, he makes time for the long runs that marathon training requires. He prefers to train at a local forest preserve in Chicago.
As the marathon approaches, though, Bosley admits he is nervous. His family will be watching, but perhaps more importantly will be a token from his brother Terrell that may be in his pocket on race day, a symbol of his quest to take “my brother’s story everywhere.” During the marathon, he said he may “carry my brother’s chain in my pocket, just to push me through.”
