Community grieves loss of slain Maury High athlete

NORFOLK

Several hundred people gathered Monday night at a candlelight vigil on the site where Maury High School star athlete Charles Humphrey was gunned down. They wiped away tears, held hands and shared memories of the popular 18-year-old football player.

A tree near where Humphrey was shot early Sunday morning, as well as a mailbox and part of the street itself, had been turned into a memorial across the street from the Park Place Methodist Church at Colonial Avenue and 34th Street, adorned with balloons, handwritten messages and teddy bears.

A woman who identified herself as “Aunt Diane” spoke to a crowd holding candles aloft.

“It is time to stop,” she said. “Feel the pain. See the blood. Death is permanent; there’s no waking up from this. Look around at all the love we have here. It is time to stop. It is time, y’all.”

Her words had many in the crowd nodding in agreement. Humphrey’s family looked on. Humphrey’s sister, Tiffany Humphrey, later said that Diane was not a blood relative but one of his many friends.

Police reported nothing new Monday in their hunt for Humphrey’s killer. He was shot around 1 a.m. Sunday. His sister said he’d been at a party in the neighborhood. The basketball and football captain at Maury was the sixth South Hampton Roads football player to be shot in the past 10 months.

Earlier Monday, family, friends, teachers, coaches and Maury’s principal surrounded Humphrey’s dazed parents in their apartment in Young Terrace, planning a memorial service held in a church that night.

A coach said he needed a projector to show a game highlight reel he had made to send to colleges on Humphrey’s behalf. Now it would be used to eulogize the teen.

His parents, Linda Humphrey and Charles Carpenter, said little. Tiffany Humphrey paused to call police with a tip about a girl who somebody said was heard bragging about the killing.

Denise Woodson, an outreach director of the Urban Community Church in Norfolk, offered a closing word. The group held hands in a circle. “Wrap your arms, like you know how to, around” the parents, Woodson prayed.

Outside, Tiffany Humphrey fretted with Humphrey’s father about getting an older brother leave from Marine Corps boot camp to attend the funeral.

“Our life will never be the same after this,” she said. “Nothing will ever be the same.”

She urged the public to tell investigators what they know.

At Maury, the halls were unusually quiet – and tearful – students said.

“Things getting crazy – too crazy,” said Isaiah Wilson, a junior. “That would be the last thing you’d expect to happen to Charles.”

Some parents said they were concerned about the upheaval this year at the school , which has seen fights and increased security.

“Ever since we found out they have gangs over here or whatever, I’ve always worried,” said Monica Harvey, the mother of a freshman girl.

She said she’d like to see more security at the school but then questioned whether it would solve the problem.

“They can’t follow them home,” she said.

In the neighborhood, advocates for Park Place complained anew about a lack of progress against its problems with crime and blight.

The city’s housing authority has spent $31.8 million in 35 years trying to revitalize the community, said Jim Gehman, the authority’s assistant executive director.

“You would think after spending all of that money, that this would be a healthy neighborhood,” said Alton Robinson, president of the Park Place Civic League. “But it’s not.”

According to the 2000 census, the neighborhood had 2,983 housing units, including apartments. The housing authority has acquired 297 properties, demolished 155, provided 607 loans for property rehabilitation and sold or developed 149 properties for new homes, according to Gehman. The housing authority has also done streetscape improvements along several streets.

“There are some nice, new homes here,” Robinson said . “But when you look at the social and economic status of the community, you don’t see much change.”

While police have reduced illegal drug dealing, he said, gang activity is rising.

The Norfolk Police Department’s online crime statistics show that within half a mile, of the shooting , nine aggravated assaults, six robberies and a rape were reported in the past 90 days.

Officer Chris Amos, a police spokesman, said the community has its crime issues but he cited neighborhood improvement efforts and added, “It’s not like it used to be. It used to be kind of very, very hectic.”

While FBI data shows that overall murders have leveled off nationally, a December study by Northeastern University in Boston concluded that the number of young black men who either killed or were killed in shootings has risen dramatically this decade.

In 2007, for instance, 426 black youths between 14 and 17 were killed, a 40 percent increase since 2000, The Associated Press quoted the report.

But those are numbers. Tiffany Humphrey talked about her little brother and how excited he was about going next year to St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh, N.C., to play football and learn a trade.

“All he kept saying was he was almost there,” Tiffany Humphrey said. “He was ready to graduate. He wanted to get out of here.”

Now she has to explain to her 5-year-old daughter why a favorite uncle won’t be around.

“It seemed everybody liked him,” said his father, the “Big Charles” to his son’s “Little Charles” nickname. “Nobody can understand why this happened to him.”

“He was what young men out here should strive for,” Tiffany Humphrey said. “People need to put down their guns, go to school.”

She said all she knows about what happened was that her brother was with friends leaving a party a few blocks from the shooting. Carlos Howard, a community advocate who owns a nearby funeral home, said students told him words were exchanged after the party and several guns were pulled. Charles Humphrey was running down the street when hit, Howard was told.

Howard blamed parents for lax supervision and city leaders for not listening to students and their parents and for not meeting their needs for activities that could keep them out of gangs, such as by providing money to reopen a nearby Boys & Girls Club.

“These children see that no one cares about them,” Howard said.

He lamented that the students seemed to think such killings are a normal part of life. “There is nothing normal about kids pulling guns and chasing down someone like that,” he said, his voice rising.

Monday morning, the opening of the $7.4 million Norview Community Center was more muted than it might have been because of the shooting.

Vice Mayor Anthony L. Burfoot asked for a moment of silence for Humphrey. He said he was struck watching a television interview of a friend of Humphrey’s.

“The young man said, 'Charles Humphrey was going to make it out, but it’s too late for me,’ ” Burfoot said. “That struck me. I said, how’s it too late for him? And to make it out of what? To make it out of his community?

“That’s a real problem we’re facing when we have young people who feel that there’s no hope and they are all of 19 years old.”

 Pilot writers Amy Jeter and Harry Minium contributed to this report.

Matthew Bowers, (757) 222-3893, matthew.bowers@pilotonline.com

Jim Washington, (757) 446-2536, jim.washington@pilotonline.com