Vernetta McCray was on her front porch last Friday when a stray bullet hit her in the head. The 39-year-old worker at the state Department of Children and Families died the next day.

“This hits close to the bone, but it is sadly not only in Trenton,” Gov. Phil Murphy said.

McCray’s murder has brought renewed attention to the escalation of gun violence and homicides in New Jersey’s capital city. Sixteen homicides last year and as of Monday, 27 this year.

“So, it is very alarming. The tensions are very high. Friction between the gangs because there is diminished drug trade and there are a lot of targeted shootings,” said Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora. “This is not just the person getting mugged down the middle of the street. This is actually gang upon gang violence.”

Among this year’s murder victims: three recently released inmates under the governor’s pandemic order to create space behind bars.

“Unfortunately, they got the wrong end of the gun,” Gusciora said.

The mayor says the proliferation of guns, the easy access to them, and the illegal possession of them promote a cycle of violence and urban areas need more federal and state help targeting gun trafficking.

Gov. Phil Murphy said he wants to see New Jersey as “the nation’s safest state as it relates to gun safety. And we’ve made an enormous amount of progress on that front. It’s quite clear we have a ways to go.”

Former mayoral candidate and community activist Darren Green says Trenton’s troubles go back decades.

“A lot of it is an extension of poverty, a lot of it is the death of self-pride, lack of moral compass within people, all based on a number variables, not just one thing, we’ve almost normalized what you’re seeing now,” Green said.

The escalation in gun violence mirrors what’s taking place in Paterson and Newark over the last couple of months. The mayors are saying enough already and so are community activists.

“One of the things I said when I ran for mayor, in my first year, my first platform would be to address mental health, addictions, and mental well-being because when you have generations that have moved through death, demoralization and destruction, even if you and I propose to bring good things here, they’re not of the mental climate to be able to deal with it because they’re so damaged from the experiences they’ve gone through,” Green said.

The Trenton Anti-Violence Coalition uses its events to promote peace and prevention.

“We strive to take a preventive measure so people can see we’re in your face, we’re bringing real mothers’ voices, we’re bringing real brotherly, manhood voices, sisterhood voices, to your face, right where you are, brothers, we understand what’s going on, but you don’t have to kill each other,” said Divine Allah, co-founder of Trenton Anti-Violence Coalition.

Later this year, Trenton will get a state-funded real-time crime center, like Newark’s, to put a hyper focus on intelligence sharing and highly active criminals. But, for now, the mayor fears what’s bad is about to get worse.

“The state is about to give release to a lot of hardened criminals and that’s troubling because they’re going to return to a lot of urban centers across the state,” Gusciora said. “A lot of returning prisoners still get back in to that pattern. We have to make sure that the state really has real rehabilitation services when they get out.”

The mayor hopes to prevent what he called “another senseless act violence,” still reeling from the unnecessary death of Vernetta McCray.