Hundreds mourn shooting victim

City employees from the Boston Centers for Youth and Families roamed about, dispensing tissues and bottled water. Paramedics were on hand, just in case, and more than half a dozen police officers stood watch and carefully coaxed traffic through the columns of mourners.

Still shaken by the brazen nature of the unsolved shooting, the hundreds who attended Turner's funeral came in tribute to a quiet eighth-grader with no criminal record and no known gang affiliation who was gunned down May 7 while waiting for the bus to school.

Approaching 16, Turner was beginning to navigate his way from adolescence to high school: a crisp dresser; a basketball player; a sometimes shy, sometimes flirty teen who liked to text-message with friends, listen to the rapper T.I., and record music in the computer lab at the Vine Street Community Center.

"He was a real cool person. I'm going to miss him," said Antonio Menefee, 15, a budding center who played with Turner, a lanky guard, for three seasons in the Boston Neighborhood Basketball League. "He was real funny. His jokes were kind of dry, but he was a funny guy."

After the funeral, as people dispersed for Roslindale's Forest Hills Cemetery, Menefee sat quietly on the steps outside the church. He was telling himself, he said, that his friend is "in a better place now."

The crowd had collected outside well before 10 a.m., queuing in front of the church and down along Norfolk Street, waiting to pass through for the hourlong wake. The funeral followed, a 2 1/2-hour service that combined poetry readings and memories of Turner with prayer, preaching, and a cascade of gospel music.

For the masses outside, the music and the essence of the service washed through the doors of the church and came across on a pair of portable speakers, though the words were only intermittently audible. But the message from Bishop Robert C. Perry II, Turner's cousin, was clear.

"He was a loving young man, he was a fine young man, he was a kind young man."

"This righteous seed has fallen to the ground for the benefit of your harvest, for the benefit of your life to be changed."

"Let there be change in our city, let there be change in our families."

Outside, many wore sky-blue ribbons and buttons that pictured Turner, with the messages "One Luv Always" and "Hope for peace, miss you." A few wore baseball caps embroidered with "R.I.P." and "SOEY," Turner's nickname. And some had T-shirts with Turner's photograph, showing a tight-lipped smile and a careful sense of style, his Atlanta Falcons hat cocked to one side over a matching red-white-and-black polo shirt.

On the lawn and the sidewalk, people clapped, held hands, swayed their arms in the air, chatted on cellphones. A few minutes before 2 p.m., the crowd began to file out of the church.

A woman in a clerical collar carried a Spalding basketball and a wreath of carnations and roses, placing both atop a hearse.

Seven relatives followed, bearing Turner's metallic-blue coffin. Family members packed into three stretch limousines, and the city ran shuttle buses to the cemetery.

"It was real sweet," said Jamal Turner, 20, an uncle and a pallbearer, later in the day. "It was a good service. . . . It was a beautiful day, for the Turner family and the community."

Turner said he was pleased by the size of the crowd but hardly surprised.

"Soheil invited everyone to his party," he said.