After the death of anti-violence leader Will "Shimmie" Miller last week, found shot in his car amid a surge of gun violence in Youngstown,  the young people he mentored are left wondering who they can look up to.

Miller worked tirelessly to bridge the gap, with a goal of keeping the youth out of harms way.

"He was a mentor first. He was a person you could go to, talk to, he didn't claim to have all the answers but he was there," Guy Burney, director of the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence, said.

City leaders say they've even heard concerns from the youth about whether or not Miller's Respect League, a program where Miller would mentor young people through basketball,  will continue this summer, now that he's gone. 

"We definitely wanna keep the league going," D'Aundray Brown, executive director of the YMCA of Youngtown said. "It's something that he would want us to do. He wouldn't want us to not do it because he's not there," he said.

"That is his legacy, that was his passion and vision and so we're going to do everything in our power to continue his legacy through doing the work," Burney said.

While city leaders fight through the grief, they try to remember everything Shimmie stood for.

"It hurts but it also gives us the opportunity to kind of take that pain and turn it into passion, which is what Shimmie did throughout his life," Brown said.

"They say you ain't gone change something until you really tired of it, so my question, my challenge to the community, is you really tired of it," Miller once said during an anti-violence discussion. "We have a concrete plan to be out in the community engaging with the little homies. As much passion as we have for it, it takes the whole community," he said.

All the details for keeping the Respect League going are not yet in place. Miller's loved ones want to lay him to rest first and then get the ball rolling on continuing his work.