Fearful relatives hold vigil for slain teen

Clutching a picture of his dead cousin, Mike Hill worried what might happen next.

“There’s a lot of people who want to retaliate, and there’s a lot of people trying to talk them out of doing that,” said Hill, 24. “Nick wasn’t about that. He just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was killed for nothing.”

Enlarge this image

Hyosub Shin /hshin@ajc.com

Laketa Scott prays as she holds a picture of Nick, who was 16, during the vigil held by friends near Turner Field on Wednesday night. Nick and two other youths were wounded there in an apparent gang-related attack on Sunday.

RELATED:
• Victim was just 16
• Teens wounded in Southside shooting

Recent headlines:

[an error occurred while processing this directive]    • Atlanta and Fulton County news

About 100 people attended a sunset vigil Wednesday in honor of Hill’s 16-year-old cousin Nick, shot in the head Sunday night by gang members outside his southwest Atlanta apartment. [Family members have asked that their surnames not be published for fear of retribution.]

Nick’s half-brother, Andre, 15, remains in critical condition at Grady Memorial Hospital. A third teen, not a family member, was shot in the ankle. He was released Wednesday from Atlanta Medical Center.

Atlanta police have yet to make any arrests in the shootings at Hank Aaron Drive and Haygood Avenue in Peoplestown. The shooting scene was the site of Wednesday’s vigil.

“Lord, I’m sick of it, and I’m tired of seeing it,” said the Rev. Frank Jones, a local pastor. “We’ve got to quit turning on each other. We are human beings, we are loved, and we are God’s creatures.”

Peoplestown community groups have set up a reward fund totaling $7,000 for anyone with information leading to the arrest of Nick’s killers.

The Carver High School sophomore was active in ROTC and enjoyed working with computers.

“He loved to travel. We were always going somewhere,” remembered his grandmother, Denise Martin, 51, of Decatur. “My daughter was asking me, ‘How are we going to make it? What are we going to do?’”

Many in Peoplestown were asking the same question Wednesday night.

“You can’t make sense out of nonsense,” said Rick McDevitt, president of the Georgia Alliance for Children. “These kids weren’t thugs. They weren’t involved in any illegal activities. They were just walking home.”