Though he was much younger than his older brother, Cedric Clark was the one who gave better advice. He had a gift for saying the right thing.
“He was the one that talked sense into people,” Anthony Lewis, Cedric’s brother, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “And he was only 17. When he said he was going to do something for you, he did it.”
On Thursday, Cedric’s family, police and his Clayton County community struggled to make sense of his death. The 11th grader at Charles Drew High School was found shot to death behind a home where he didn’t live. Cedric was the fifth young person between the ages of 11 and 17 to be killed by gunfire in the past month in Clayton.
On Oct. 4, two Riverdale High School students died in a suspected murder-suicide at a Riverdale home. On Oct. 22, a 15-year-old boy and his 11-year-old sister were killed in a home invasion, an act police have called gang retaliation. And early Tuesday, Cedric was found face-down behind a home on Eagles Feather Lane. Though Cedric wasn't in a gang, it's possible his killing was gang-related, according to police.
If Cedric had enemies, his family didn’t know about them. When the teenager left home Tuesday evening with a friend, the two planned to walk to a convenience store to buy soft drinks, Lewis said. It was the last time Cedric’s family saw him alive.
That same friend returned to Cedric’s home to see if he was there. There had been shots fired, the teenager said, and he and Cedric had gone in different directions, according to Lewis. Shortly before 10 p.m., the friend took Lewis and his girlfriend to a home where he said he last saw Cedric. Cedric wasn’t there.
Lewis didn’t panic immediately, but continued searching for Cedric, calling his name and looking for any sign that his brother had been there. Around 5 a.m., Lewis said he found his brother’s lifeless body. Cedric’s hands appeared to have been holding his stomach and he wasn’t wearing shoes.
“My brother wasn’t running,” Lewis said. “He had been shot. If he had been running, he would’ve been shot in the back. And he would’ve had his shoes on.”
Cedric, Lewis believes, was an innocent victim, caught in the gunfire from someone else’s fight. The teenager’s death remains under investigation and no arrests had been made late Thursday, according to police.
The mood along Eagles Feather Lane was eerily quiet Thursday afternoon, and no one answered the door where the crime was discovered. Stuck above the doorknob was a leaflet from The New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense extending condolences for “the death of teenagers in your community” and offering to “stand with you” in case of harassment.
Across the street, Funmi Kasumu, has lived in the subdivision 14 years. She said she had never heard or seen anything like what she witnessed Wednesday morning when she was jolted awake by wailing. It was the victim’s mother.
“I was really, really, surprised,” she recalled. “It was so painful.”
A few blocks away, Amy Gay was walking her three children home from the school bus.
“I still can’t believe somebody got killed just behind my house,” she said, her head gesturing down the street. She and her family have lived in the neighborhood nearly five years. “I don’t feel safe anymore.”
Ashley Jackson sat outside his home with a friend listening to music from a truck radio. Jackson has lived in the community 12 years this month and remembers hearing gunshots Tuesday night.
“I really wasn’t that shocked about it,” he said.
With few extracurricular activities available to kids in Clayton, Jackson says the violence is not surprising. The recreation centers rarely if ever promote activities, he said.
“A lot of this has to do with a lot of these young kids have no direction or structure,” Jackson said. “That’s why there’s all the gang violence. There’s not much for kids to do around here.”
On Thursday, 1,500 juniors and seniors at Mundy’s Mill High School gathered for an assembly about gang awareness and other criminal activities, part of a series of in-school programs the school district started this week. Superintendent Luvenia Jackson said Thursday that a dozen Gang Awareness & Criminal Procedure assemblies are scheduled through Nov. 17.
“While it’s not happening in our schools, it’s in the community,” Jackson said. “The children are the ones we’re most concerned about. We have to make them aware. It may not be you, but if you are aware of things going on in the community, tell someone.”
Funeral plans were still pending Thursday for Cedric, who loved playing baseball. He hoped to play baseball in college and already gotten a letter of interest, Lewis said. If not college, Cedric planned to join the Air Force.
But even with his big plans, Cedric wanted to be close to his family, Lewis said. In July 2013, Lewis said he’d returned from a short trip when his brother requested he make a promise.
“We promised each other we’d never leave each other,” Lewis said.
Now, Lewis will only have his brother’s memory.
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