Relatives grapple with void after teen's death

"He said, 'Dad, the real champs play tonight,' " Turner's father, Soheil Wright, a Celtics fan, said of their trash-talking before school May 7. "I said, 'You can't go against your home team, man.' "

Not an hour later, Turner was shot twice in the head on Dudley Street as he waited for the bus to his Charlestown school. He died that night at Boston Medical Center. The Cavaliers won big.

In the mournful days since, Turner's family, neighborhood, and school community have struggled to come to terms with their sudden loss; struggled to understand the void that his brazen, unsolved slaying has left in their lives. As mourners prepare for Turner's funeral this morning, there is anger, but also calls for forgiveness and peace. Mostly there is a gaping hole once filled by a shy but spunky 15-year-old everyone knew as "Soey."

"They took my son," Wright said. "My only son."

Turner's killer also took a scrappy basketball player; a sharp dresser; a lover and practitioner of hip-hop; a night owl prone to marathon sessions of the video game NBA 2K9; a flirt who wrote girls on his Sidekick PDA; a finicky eater; a beloved nephew; and an eighth-grader described by those who knew him as a good, respectful kid.

"Every time before he leaves the house, he'll look down at himself and make sure he looks proper," said an uncle, Jamal Turner. "Our family was showing through him."

Jamal Turner said he will now have to be the big sibling for his nephew's 5-year-old brother.

"I'm going to have to step up to the plate," he said.

Beyond his family, Turner leaves a void at the Vine Street Community Center, which he treated like a second home. He played ball and was a whiz at using the center's lab of Apple computers to make music, said David Hinton, the center's administrator.

"If I had 100 kids like him, I would be out of a job," Hinton said. "This hit us all kind of hard."

One reason Turner's killing is so difficult for his friends and family to comprehend is that he was not evidently involved in any gang activity. Police say Turner had no criminal background. His family wonders whether, simply by hailing from the Orchard Gardens neighborhood and possibly being friendly with youth who are active in gangs, he unwittingly made himself a target.

"When this first happened, I think I said he was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Jamal Turner said. "I take that back. I feel that he was in the right place at the right time - going to school."

"He wasn't a follower. He had his own identity," Wright said. "He was a good kid, and I'm not just saying that because he's my kid."

His father continued, "Why me? Why me?"

Then he paused. "Not 'why me?' Why my son?"

"Total disregard for human life," he said with disgust.

Turner's father is not ready to talk about forgiveness, but other relatives are seeking to fill the void with peace. Ezzard Turner, Turner's great uncle and godfather, has been imploring youth in their neighborhood to not seek retaliation.

"That's the last thing I want to see happen," he said.

"Yes, I'm hurt. Yes, I'm angry," he continued. "We don't need no retaliation, OK? We don't need no more grieving. . . . We don't want to see another family grieving now."

Since Turner's death, loved ones have added candles, photos, flowers, scribbled notes, stuffed animals, and food to a makeshift memorial outside Nunez Market, where he was killed. Kew Tyler, a friend of the family, was there earlier this week absorbing the loss and capturing the memorial on camera.

"You try to bring your kids up and there's nowhere to go," she said. "Where are you safe? You're not safe anywhere."

Turner created a MySpace profile a few years ago. He lied badly about his age, calling himself 19. But he seemed to answer the site's survey questions honestly.

"Do you want to go to college?" it asked. "Yea," he wrote.

Did he want to get married?

"Someday."

His fears?

"Don't have none."

"How do you want to die?

"Peacefully."

Today, what is left are just memories.

"Now I feel that everything I do, I do it for Soheil, and I know he's going to love that," Jamal Turner said. "He's going to enjoy it. He's going to be up in heaven just laughing."

"He's making it work," Turner continued. "Thanks, So. Thank you, So. I love you."

Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.