Basketball team captain shot dead on porch in Springfield
Police in Springfield are investigating a shooting yesterday that took the life of the captain of the varsity basketball team at Springfield Central High School.
Mario Hornsby, 19, was sitting on a porch in the Mason Square neighborhood with about 10 other people around 12:30 a.m. yesterday when another group approached, police said. Words were exchanged and shots were fired, they said. Hornsby was hit once in the back. He was taken to Baystate Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
"At this point we have no reason to believe he was the intended victim," said Robert McFarlin, captain of the Springfield police. "We believe that the shooting was precipitated by a gang altercation at a party at a local banquet hall the same night."
His family and educators described a promising student athlete who started out slowly in high school but used his love of sports and athletic ability as motivation to blossom into an honor student with a 3.57 grade point average in his senior year.
"He was a regular kid," said his father, Mario Hornsby Sr. "He was never really in any trouble. His life was basketball. That's what he wanted to do."
Hornsby was to have graduated from Springfield Central on June 9 and attend Brandeis University, where he was to have played basketball, in the fall.
"I just saw him yesterday in the cafeteria. He was smiling. He was always very respectful," said Richard W. Stoddard, principal of Springfield Central.
"Here's a young man who was so intelligent. It's a senseless loss. A senseless loss."
Hornsby developed a lymphatic kidney disorder in 2006, which took more than 18 months to get under control, his parents said. He overcame his disease to make the varsity basketball team for the first time this year, rising quickly to captain. He received the Eric Koszalka Memorial Award on May 4 at the Basketball Hall of Fame's High School Basketball Awards Banquet, for work ethic, sportsmanship, and a positive attitude, said his mother, Monique.
The shooting has left school administrators angry and frustrated as they try their best to help students succeed in the classroom, only to have tragedy and violence cut young lives short.
On May 26, 2007, Joseph B. Scott-Maille, 21, a star football player at Springfield Central, was accidentally shot and killed by a friend. David Berrios, 21, is serving a five- to seven-year prison term after accepting an involuntary manslaughter plea bargain May 12.
"I've had five, six kids pass on me in the last three, four years," Stoddard said.
"You just, I don't know what to say about it. I just wish we could control what's going on in the streets, and we can't. We try so hard to build a life for these kids, and they go home to very different situations and different scenarios."
"There was more to this young man," Stoddard said. "So much unhidden potential that now can't be accessed." 