About 20 feet away from a makeshift memorial of flowers and candles, a fist-sized, dried bloodstain still marked the sidewalk along the 6300 block of Rainier Avenue South where Pierre K. Lapoint, 16, collapsed after being fatally shot Tuesday.
Paige, who lives a block away and saw him just before he died, prayed for guidance and protection for those he left behind.
"These are 18- and 17-year-olds who are killing 15- and 14-year-olds," said Paige, who described herself as a godmother to Lapoint. "Something needs to be done about this."
It was one of two shootings under investigation Wednesday, and one of five homicides in Seattle this year with possible gang connections.
Seattle police were called about 10:30 p.m. to the shooting, near South Graham Street. Lapoint was walking home with three friends when a gunshot struck him in the stomach. He was taken to Harborview Medical Center, where he died.
Police interviewed witnesses, including his friends, but had not made any arrests.
Sources who knew the victim said he had affiliations with "Down With The Crew," one of Seattle's older street gangs in the South End. Police, however, were unable to say Wednesday whether gang ties had any role in the shooting. Gang unit detectives were working with the homicide investigators.
"We don't have any information about the reasons behind either one of these shootings," said gang unit Lt. Ron Wilson, referring to Lapoint and a second shooting about 45 minutes later in which a 29-year-old man was wounded in the 4300 block of South Othello Street.
The two cases didn't appear to be connected, Wilson said.
Friends described Lapoint as a goofball, who liked playing the clown. Known as "Pete," he attended Franklin High School, where he played football and would have been a junior.
Almost three hours before he died, he left a message on his girlfriend's cell phone. Dejaunah Jones, 15, said the call came at 9:16 p.m., but she was asleep and missed it. They'd been dating for two years and she plans to save his message forever, she said.
"He was real goofy. He was always trying to make people laugh," she said just before a rush of emotion stole her voice.
In the weeks before his death, some friends had been trying to get him to join a youth outreach program, and he'd seemed interested.
A cousin, Taye Cheatham, 16, sat Wednesday afternoon with a group of other Rainier Beach teens in the gang-intervention group Youth 180, struggling to figure out what to do next. The meeting was held at Aki Kurose Middle School, not far from the shooting.
They could raise money for Pete's family and be there for this mother, a single mom raising three – now two – children, Taye suggested in a hoarse mumble. The other youths nodded. Maybe a car wash, they said, another community meeting or a stop-the-violence march. But beyond those ideas, most of the boys appeared to be numb at the news.
"I didn't believe it at first when my brother told me – because we play around like that," Taye said.
Pete had been gang-involved, another teen acknowledged, and he knew where that could lead. But he was no hardened gangster.
"He was, like, joke-full," said Lahraj Garrett, 14. He was also on the verge of joining Youth 180. "I told him about us and he said, 'Yeah, I'm gonna come down there.' But he didn't make it."
The boy's mother, Tina Hibbitt, had come to the attention of others who wanted to reach out as well. With her son rebelling, her elder daughter having trouble graduating from high school and a younger child with serious health problems, at least one parent activist had urged Hibbitt to join her group.
"You could see in her face that she was stressed out," said Jacqueline Moore, vice-president of the Cleveland High School Parent-Teacher-Student-Association. "I called and called her, and she said she'd try to come. But she never did."
No one answered the door Wednesday at Hibbitt's address, a few blocks east of Martin Luther King Jr. Way.
"I'm pretty sure she's terrified, dealing with the death of her 16-year-old son and a daughter who is seriously ill," Paige said.
Another cousin, Jonathan Jackson, 16, said Lapoint had been in his gang "his whole life," but Jackson didn't think the shooting was in retaliation for anything. " 'Cause if that was, we'd be all dead," he said.
Jackson last saw his cousin on the day he was killed, he said. The two had been walking on Henderson Street, something they did often while hanging out. They saw each other nearly every day, often going to the mall or playing basketball at Rainier Beach Community Center.
"He said he was going to go; that was the last I seen him," said Jackson, who lives in Renton. "I loved him like a brother. He was my bro. He was hella cool."
Lapoint's criminal record started at 13, when he was charged with robbing an 11-year-old girl of her Jordan sneakers as she walked home, according to court records. Lapoint received a deferred prosecution. He was charged a year later with robbing another girl of a Gameboy, and later acquitted.
Last year, Lapoint pleaded guilty to stealing a golf cart with three friends from the Jefferson Park course. Later this month, he had been scheduled to plead guilty to possession of marijuana, according to court records.
As patrol cars occasionally cruised by Wednesday afternoon on Rainier, friends ambled down the sidewalk to pay their respects at the site. One young man gently placed orange and black bandanas at the small cross.
A string of gang-related slayings involving young teens earlier this year had police fearing a violent streak this summer. One Friday night during the first weekend of June, detectives were called to four shootings in the Central Area and Rainier Valley.
But things seemed to cool down until last month, when one man was killed in Kent and another was wounded in retaliation in Renton, according to court documents.
"We have had some serious incidents, and I don't know how you paint it just because they don't happen every night," said Wilson, Seattle's gang unit commander. "But the killing and wounding and maiming of people – enough is enough."
Gang unit detectives planned to drop by at a basketball tournament this weekend at Rainier Beach Community Center to show a presence and guard against any retaliation. They also planned to scope out an upcoming hip-hop concert and other events to show people they're around, Wilson said.
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