KENOSHA, Wisc., (SPECTRUM NEWS) — It’s hard to imagine what it’s like until you see this destruction.
On Tuesday morning, residents in Kenosha woke up to their community destroyed.
“I woke up to this. I wasn’t expecting this; I am in my pajamas, ” says Diana Graves of Kenosha.
Like many people living near Uptown, Graves woke up the smell of smoke, seeing many businesses vandalized, looted and others burned to the ground.
"I used to sit there in the window — coffee and the sun on my back — and it felt so good, and now what? Where do I get to feel this way again? Where was the national guard? How does this happen with the National Guard? I don't get it," Graves says.
Kenosha is also home to 27-year-old Mia Langston, a single mother of four with a fifth child on the way.
"We don’t have transportation to get around to other big stores so this is our community. This is how we live. It's coming to our local stores and supporting them and having them be there for us," Langston says.
Restaurants, small businesses — staples of the community — are now gone.
A community mourns not only the shooting of their neighbor, 29-year-old Jacob Blake by Kenosha police, but they mourn the loss of what no longer feels like home.