Mar 10, 2008 11:05 pm US/Pacific
Funeral Service To Be Held For Jamiel Shaw Jr.
LOS ANGELES (AP) ―
A funeral service will be held Tuesday for slain Los Angeles High School football star Jamiel Shaw Junior.
The 17-year-old was shot to death March 2nd on the sidewalk just a few doors from his Arlington Heights home.
The high school running back led his high school's football team to a Southern League title and he was attracting scholarship attention from Stanford, Rutgers and other schools.
"He was such a beautiful boy," family friend Denise McMorris told a local news station. "I mean, you couldn't ask for a perfect son. You know, he was just like my own. He was very, very nice. He was awesome."
Relatives said that he should be remembered as an example for all young people.
"I'm here to say that he was killed by gang members," Jamiel Shaw Sr. said about his son's death. "Maybe he was killed because they thought he was a black gang member, but he wasn't killed because he was a black man ... ."
Jamiel's mother, Army Sgt. Anita Shaw, was serving in Iraq when her son was slain. She called for community action to stop gang violence.
Police and witnesses say Jamiel was killed by gang members who asked him what gang he belonged to, then shot him when he didn't answer. No arrests have been made.
"The community needs to stand up as a whole and stop this, stop the madness," Anita Shaw said. "Why do we have to continue to live like this? They need to stand up and say enough is enough."
Police and witnesses say Jamiel was killed by gang members who asked him what gang he belonged to, then shot him when he didn't answer. No arrests have been made.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
