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Post by A Ghost in the Wind on Apr 9, 2005 15:05:11 GMT -5
I'd like to take this space to say R.I.P. to one of my very good friends, Barry Ferrell, who was shot and killed on Wednesday. Barry, we went through alot together, and you will be missed.
For anyone interested in the story, I'll leave the articles in a reply.
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Post by A Ghost in the Wind on Apr 9, 2005 15:08:10 GMT -5
Friends, family memorialize teen who always made them 'laugh' The Providence police say they have no witnesses in 18-year-old Barry Ferrell's shooting death, and are asking anyone with information to contact them.
01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, April 9, 2005
BY GREGORY SMITH Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- They were "tossin' it up" for Barry D. Ferrell II after a remembrance service at the Hartford Park housing complex last night.
Some of Ferrell's friends raised their hands high with three fingers extended in a sign of solidarity, and they held red bandannas aloft.
"This is showing we care for each other," called out Aaron Muskelly, 17, a Hartford Park resident.
Ferrell, 18, an outgoing high school senior who loved to play basketball, was fatally shot at a bus stop outside Hartford Park at dusk Wednesday. In his memory a sad but sometimes joyous prayer service/revival meeting was held yesterday evening outside the public housing complex and near the spot where he fell.
Ferrell was part of a group who called themselves "Dipset," in an apparent reference to hip-hop performers.
Before and after the prayers, friends and acquaintances greeted and consoled one another. And they talked a lot about Ferrell.
"That's all he did was laugh," said Muskelly, who was one of a group wearing T-shirts imprinted with different photographs of Ferrell and the words, "RIP Barry." Some of the youths bore bold messages freshly tattooed on their arms: "See you when I get there. RIP Barry."
Talking loudly, so many could hear, Muskelly reminisced. Chuckling, he recalled one of Ferrell's favorite lines, "It's like butter, baby."
Alternately laughing and crying over their loss, Muskelly and some of Ferrell's brothers and friends got together in a huge hug that broke apart and reassembled several times.
Being comforted and in turn, comforting others, Ferrell's mother, Trixy, embraced a sobbing girl and assured her, "He loved you so much."
She said she intends to get a tattoo on her arm with her son's favorite saying, "Laugh now, cry later" -- a motto that reflected both his optimism and his belief that what goes around in life, comes around.
Ferrell grew up in Hartford Park, where the family lived for 14 years before moving to the Manton neighborhood, as one of five brothers and a son to Trixy Ferrell, 35, an unemployed former correctional officer, and Barry D. Ferrell, a carpet layer and construction laborer who is looking for work.
He and his brothers were scattered in the public school system. Ferrell was a popular and charming student at the Alternate Learning Project, a 98-student high school in Elmwood where he was student council president. Branden, 16, was a student at Harrison Street High School; Bryent, 14, at Central High School; Brent, 15, at Central; and Baheem, 12, at Perry Middle School.
Ferrell played basketball for Mount Pleasant High School, because his school was too small to have a team, at the Wanskuck Boys & Girls Club, or wherever he could find a game. When he was younger he played in a preteen football league, mostly for the West End Intruders team.
Ferrell's mother described him as "a ladies man" with many admirers and said he happened to be talking to a girl just before he was shot.
In the moments following, she said, he tried to get to the nearby apartment of his close friend Jose Martinez before he crumpled. He was rushed to Rhode Island Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
"My baby died for nothing," a grim Trixy Ferrell told the crowd of about 200 that was gathered for the service.
The police have been coy about the number of times he was shot, saying at first that he was shot twice, in the head and the abdomen, and then issuing a press release referring to a single wound.
Detective Lt. Hugh Clements yesterday declined to clear up the ambiguity. The police said several times that they have no witnesses, and they appealed for anyone who knows anything to call them.
In an effort to pull something positive out of Ferrell's shooting, Bishop Robert E. Farrow, pastor of Holy Ghost Church of God in Christ United, in South Providence, said he plans to launch a church-based basketball league. Farrow, who organized the service, said he wants to give young people something to do with their idle time.
Among the speakers during the service was Floyd Narcisse, a special-education teacher in the city schools and head basketball coach at Central. Narcisse waved a Bible, which he called "my gun," and led some in the crowd in a reading of the 23rd Psalm.
"My plea today, young men, is to turn in your weapons," he bellowed.
An emotional Fran Gallo, transitional superintendent of the city schools, announced Ferrell will be awarded a posthumous high school diploma at the graduation ceremony at the Alternate Learning Project.
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PROVIDENCE -- Friendly and polite, with a beautiful smile. President of his high school student council. A teenager who liked to play sports.
That was Barry D. Ferrell, according to those who knew him or knew about him. Ferrell, 18, was shot to death Wednesday night at a bus stop outside the Hartford Park public housing complex where he used to live.
The mood at the Alternate Learning Project, a small public high school in the Elmwood neighborhood where Ferrell was a senior, was "very subdued, very difficult" yesterday as shocked teachers and fellow students talked about him, said Jose Aleman, ALP principal.
"He was a very likable, well-mannered young man . . . who was on his way to graduation," said Aleman, who saw Ferrell virtually every day. "He was working very hard to get his high school diploma."
He was elected council president in a vote of the school, which has an official enrollment of 98.
In a salute to Ferrell, who played basketball for Mount Pleasant High School because ALP is too small to have its own team, students gathered on the outside basketball court at ALP, and a pair of basketball sneakers was hung from the backboard rim. Inside, candles were lit.
Grief counselors fanned out to at least four schools to provide students with a shoulder to cry on or a patient ear to listen, according to school officials.
Ferrell's four brothers attend Providence public schools: Two at Central High School, one at Harrison Street High School, and one at Perry Middle School.
"He had friends and other relatives in a variety of schools," said Fran Gallo, transitional superintendent of schools. "It really affected the student life throughout the system."
The School Department enlarged its regular crisis response team by calling on guidance counselors and social workers from the elementary schools as well as members of the streetworkers program of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence.
"We are giving them the support that they need," Aleman said of the students. "Hopefully this will bring them closer together."
Said Teny Gross, director of the Nonviolence Institute, "People took this very, very hard. This was a kid thinking about his future," talking about going to college and trying his best to be a big brother.
"He often talked to kids about living a straight, right life," Gross said.
Gallo said students "had wonderful things to say" about Ferrell. "He's a big loss to them, to their whole youthful community."
The police were mum about the killing -- the second in Providence this year -- except to disclose that Ferrell was the victim and to say they have no witnesses. They appealed to the public yesterday for information, asking anyone who might know something about the slaying to contact either Detective Sgt. Michael Sweeney or Detective Maurice Green at 243-6406.
Stephen O'Rourke, Providence Housing Authority executive director, said Ferrell and his immediate family moved out of Hartford Park in 2002.
While he was a tenant, according to O'Rourke, Ferrell participated in many of the authority's recreational and educational activities: Playing basketball and dodgeball -- he was judged most valuable player on the dodgeball team; using the computer lab; and attending seminars on the prevention of substance abuse.
In years past, Ferrell played for the Southside Saints, a team in a preteen football league.
"Everybody tells me he was a pretty good kid," O'Rourke said. "When I was growing up on the South Side, we fought [with our fists]. Now the kids take out guns. Shameful."
Extra officers from the city and Housing Authority police forces patrolled Hartford Park yesterday.
"We are taking the temperature and trying to prevent any future violence," said police Maj. Paul Fitzgerald.
After the shooting, some streetworkers went to the Rhode Island Hospital emergency room to comfort family members and others went to Hartford Park to, as Gross put it, help people cope without striking back.
At the housing project, Ferrell's friends and former neighbors created a shrine for the tall, skinny young man. About 30 candles and a handful of crosses surround a picture of the smiling youth. Laid nearby were his team shirt and black high-top basketball sneakers.
As dusk fell, a crowd remained gathered, including community activists and religious leaders. The Holy Cross Church of God in Christ United plans to hold a service at the shooting site at 5:30 p.m. today.
"They have a desire to take a tragedy and make triumph out of it with compassion and love," said Bishop Robert E. Farrow, church pastor.
Leaning on a car near the makeshift memorial, Amanda Otera and Jenny Sanchez said Ferrell loved to play basketball and rap.
"He was mad sweet," said Otera, 17. "He had a beautiful smile and bright white teeth."
"He was a nice kid," Sanchez said. "He didn't deserve this."
With a report from staff writer Cathleen F. Crowley.
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