PROVIDENCE — Every year around Sept. 23, members of the Hector family gather residents of their neighborhood of Mount Hope to mark the day their youngest son, Joseph Hector, was cut down in a drive-by shooting at the age of 17.

The annual gathering, at a park at the corner where Hector was slain in 2001, has become a bigger and more recognized event.

Hector’s death, a case of mistaken identity in a long-running feud between East Side and South Side gangs, has come to symbolize for many the senselessness of the street violence that still plagues the city.

“This family has transformed a personal tragedy into something that brings together a neighborhood,” said Mayor David N. Cicilline. “They took what must have been an unimaginable pain and turned it into something positive.”

Yesterday’s Joseph I. Hector Victims of Crime Day, in Billy Taylor Park, was a day of free live music, dancing, spoken word and food meant to steer younger kids away from the negative influences that drive some of them toward crime.

There was an inflatable bounce house. Kids played basketball and drew chalk images on the concrete. Representatives from the Institute for the Study and Practice of Non-Violence, the city’s After School Alliance and the Mount Hope Neighborhood Association set up information tables.

Joseph’s older brother, Sam, organized the event, which was first held in 2002 and organized by Joseph’s father, David. It’s the second consecutive year Sam, a 27-year-old local disc jockey and break dancer, has run the event.

“We’re trying to end violence on all sides of town. We’re keeping Joe’s memory alive because there’s another generation coming along,” says Betty Hector, Joseph’s mother. “I can only hope that it makes a difference.”

The event provides a timely message for city residents.

August was one of the most violent months in Providence’s recent history. Twenty people were shot and two killed in more than a dozen shootings.

Two of the shootings, on Aug.1 and Aug. 23, happened on Pleasant Street, which is a block from the park where yesterday’s event took place. Cicilline says that so far this month, the shootings have abated. Police are still looking for any information regarding many of those August shootings.

Gunfire and gang violence are not the first things that come to mind when one thinks of the city’s East Side, home to some of Rhode Island’s wealthiest and one ivy-covered university.

But Mount Hope, the neighborhood bounded by Rochambeau Avenue in the north and Olney Street in the south, has historically dealt with poverty, crime and gang violence, according to residents.

“There’s no in-fighting in the neighborhood. It’s something between some kids here and kids in other neighborhoods,” said Ward 3 City Councilman Kevin Jackson. “It’s been going on so long that the kids don’t even know what they’re fighting about anymore.”

Yesterday’s event kicked off with a group of professional graffiti artists from New York creating a new mural for the park.

The Tats Cru, paid with a $4,600 grant secured by Rep. Gordon D. Fox, D-Providence, painted a mural Sam Hector described as “hip-hop positive.”

It depicts kids playing in a park and a disc jockey with a turntable and a microphone. Around it are the names of some recent victims of violent crimes, including Joseph Hector.

The mural takes the place of a more macabre one made in 1996. That mural, made with angels and a graveyard was “made with good intent,” said Sam. “This one’s just more positive, more colorful.”

pmarcelo@projo.com