Teen fatally shot near basketball court is called a good kid who had a bright future

Travis Andersen/Globe Staff

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff and Jeannie Nuss and Sean Teehan, Globe Correspondents

Friends and relatives of 14-year-old Jaewon Martin who was fatally shot in the vicinity of a basketball court near the Jamaica Plain/Roxbury line Saturday afternoon said he was a good kid in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A popular honor roll student, Martin would have graduated from the eighth grade at the James P. Timilty Middle School in Roxbury at the end of the school year.

Martin was well-liked and well-known by students and staff alike, and his family was very involved in the school, said Boston Public Schools spokesman Matthew Wilder.

“It’s a really tough day for the school community,” Wilder said.

Grief counselors will be on hand at the school to help students and faculty members cope with Martin’s death.

“Any time a student is killed in way like this it just shocks our entire school community, especially when it’s such a young life,” Wilder said. “We really do send our thoughts and our prayers to the family.”

The teen's second cousin, Lakeisha Martin, of the South End, said he and his friends wrote to officials urging them to begin improvements of a park next to the school.

"They got a letter from him and his friends, and now they're building it," she said as she marched during a Mother's Day peace march in Dorchester this morning.

Boston police have not identified another juvenile who was also shot near the court on Parker Street. Police said in a statement today that Martin died at Brigham and Women's Hospital last night and the other victim was taken to Children's Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

This afternoon, a white teddy bear and pink flowers sat at half court, near the area where Martin and the other youth were shot.

Martin said her cousin, the boy's mother, had planned to attend today's march to support another cousin, Natasha Steele, of Roxbury, who lost her son Cedirick to gun violence in 2007.

"But then [Jaewon's murder] happened," Martin said.

Steele added that the teen had a bright future.

"He knew where he wanted to go, he wasn't into trouble," Steele said.

Thomas Jones, 20, who lives in the area of Parker Street where the youths were shot, said Martin had lived there for much of his life and came back regularly. He enjoyed playing basketball, Jones said, and was "never disrespectful" to adults.

"He was a smart kid, not at all a trouble maker," Jones said. "He didn't deserve any of this."