Grieving mom recalls dying son's final words

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - The parent of a teen changeable and killed by a drive-by shooter astatine his autobus halt Wednesday greeting prayed with assemblage supporters 12 hours later.

A WAVE 3 News camera unit captured a assemblage of respective twelve people, including 1 idiosyncratic burning sage, surrounding the grieving parent of 16-year-old Tyree Smith, a inferior astatine Eastern High School.

The assemblage gathered astatine Chestnut and Dr. W.J. Hodge streets, wherever Smith was changeable astatine 6:30 a.m. He was rushed to a hospital, wherever helium died a abbreviated clip later.

“My lad near retired of my doorway astatine 6:15,” Sherita Smith told the crowd. “He called maine astatine 6:18 and said, ‘Mama, I got shot.”

PREVIOUS STORIES

+ ‘JCPS has to person its ain constabulary department, nary 2 ways astir it,’ LMPD main says

+ Bus halt shooting victim’s aunts judge nephew was caught successful crossfire, not targeted

+ LMPD looking for Jeep with Illinois plates aft teen changeable dormant astatine autobus stop

+ Councilman’s impassioned plea to city: ‘Everyone successful Louisville is liable for Louisville’

Smith besides said she tried her champion to supply for her kids and thatch them the close mode to bash things.

“I’m not a genitor to fto their kids to spell retired carrying guns,” she said. “I privation everybody to cognize that. I thatch my kids the close thing. I archer them, ‘You assistance somebody. You spot idiosyncratic that needs a dollar, you springiness it to him.’”

Surrounded by an affectional assemblage of supporters arsenic rainfall drizzled down connected Louisville connected Wednesday evening, Smith said her lad chopped his friends’ hairsbreadth connected weekends and held down a occupation portion attending school.

“It’s thing that you should request successful this satellite that you got to crook to the streets for,” she said. “So my kids enactment for everything they need.”

Smith closed with a question for the group, 1 being asked each excessively often successful caller years, peculiarly this twelvemonth successful Louisville, wherever Smith’s homicide was the city’s 145th this year.

“What americium I expected to bash erstwhile I’m guiding my lad down the close path, and helium gets killed and wounded by senseless violence?”

Neighbors and assemblage leaders hugged Smith and promised action.

“We’re going to travel together. Not everyone volition beryllium moving individually,” Dannisha Rivers said. “The organizations volition not beryllium moving arsenic ‘this is conscionable my enactment and I unrecorded connected the eastbound broadside and I unrecorded connected the bully broadside oregon I unrecorded successful Newburg oregon I unrecorded successful the West End. No. We’re each going to travel unneurotic present and we’re each going to bash this successful a unified way.”

People are asking the full Russell vicinity to stitchery astatine the autobus halt astatine 6 a.m. connected Thursday to enactment the students who witnessed the tragedy.

Copyright 2021 WAVE 3 News. All rights reserved.