A few words from those who knew him...

Some excerpts from The Contra Costa Times article "Police have no suspects in 14-year-old's shooting death" by Karl Fischer about the killing of Camaron Walker(6/16/2006)...

Inside, the boy's mother, Robbie Luckey sat on a sofa, hands over her face, scarcely shackling her agony. Wednesday night, her son was walking home from playing basketball at the nearby Monterey Pines public housing project.

Then suddenly, he wasn't.

"We need people to help find who did this to my baby. He was a good kid. Please help us!" Luckey said, her sobs punctuating each sentence. "This is not fair! This is not fair! This is not fair!"

[....]

"Something inside me just told me it would be one of our kids," [Lovonya Dejean Middle School Principal Antoinette] Evans said. "We try to get the heart of each child, to give them a different view of life. Sometimes you just feel it's not enough. And sometimes, something like this happens...it's hard to believe. But so is the loss of any child. When you lose a child, there's really nothing left to say.

[Camaron Walker had just graduated 8th grade, and was a straight A honor student.]

[....]

"When you are living in Richmond, California, you kind of come to expect it. I'm just being real with you," said the Rev. Carlos Smith, a youth pastor at Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church, which is located down the street from Walker's home.

In particular, Smith added, he didn't expect it to be Camaron Walker, a gregarious boy who talked about pursuing a career in stand-up comedy, part of a pack of kids who would hang around in front of the church. Walker was a little boy when they met, said Smith, who was a teenager growing up in the neighborhood.

The killing was Richmond's 16th of the year. Last year at this time, police had investigated 13 homicides.

Not all of these killings are of thugs and drug dealers. Some are kids like Camaron who are trying to be better than that.