A St. Louis teen posted on social media Saturday that he was "just glad I can say I made it to see 17." Slightly more than an hour later, he was shot to death, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Armond Latimore was shot in the head around 1 p.m. Saturday -- his birthday -- outside a restaurant, the newspaper reported. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said.
Latimore’s mother, Chandra D. Payne, said her son wanted nothing elaborate for his birthday, just asking for ice cream to accompany the cake he was having.
"I went to Save A Lot and three minutes later I received the call," Payne told the Post-Dispatch.
Police have not released information about a suspect or motive.
Latimore was a sophomore in high school. After the shooting, Payne said she found a paper her son wrote for school about a bully who was harassing him, the Post-Dispatch reported. However, Payne said her son never mentioned a bully, and Latimore's father and siblings did not know of any problems the teen was having.
On Facebook, Latimore had posted a photo of himself holding a large amount of money; his mother responded by telling him to “take this pic down.” There are other photos with the boy holding more cash (“Win some you lose some,” he wrote on one post). Another photo showed the teen with what looked to be a handgun in his pocket and his comment, “The devil want my soul” with the hashtag #InGodITrust.
Payne told the Post-Dispatch that Latimore never owned a gun, and the money was not his. She described him as "a helping-hand child."
“He would cut grass, wash your car or sell water,” Payne told the newspaper. “He loved music and loved money and always made it the right way.”
Harvey Collins of St. Louis told the Post-Dispatch that Latimore helped move his daughter into her dorm at Harris-Stowe State University two hours before his death.
“I can’t believe that a couple hours later he was dead,” Collins told the newspaper. “That’s a crying shame.”
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