Thomas MacMillan Photo
A basketball coach promised Marquell Banks will live on as the “sixth man” every time his team takes the court, as a church full of mourners celebrated the life of a beloved 13-year-old who was killed last week.
“We have the advantage now because every time we step on the court, we’ve got the sixth man,” Frank Redente Jr. told a church of packed pews at the Immanuel Baptist Church on Chapel Street.
Redente was a featured speaker at a Monday morning memorial service for Quelly, a 7th-grader who was fatally shot on Sunday, Oct. 23 in West River. A man accused of killing the 13-year-old turned himself in the next day.
On Monday morning, Quelly lay in an open gray casket at the front of the church. Friends and family wept and embraced as they viewed his body. His smiling portrait stood on an easel to one side, draped with white cloth.
At 11:05 a.m., as the casket closed, the church was silent save for loud sobbing from family members in the front row.
More than two hours of prayer, singing, clapping, and emotional reflection followed.
“His eye is on the sparrow, and I know Quelly watches me,” sang one young performer, who put her face in her hands as she was ushered away from the pulpit.
Throughout the service, speakers issued calls to tackle the violence that ended Quelly’s life by urging families and communities to take greater responsibility. Others celebrated him as a funny and loving kid, student and basketball player.
Contributed Photo
Tiffany Caldwell, Quelly’s reading teacher at Fair Haven School for the past two years, was called up to speak.
“This is the Marquell I knew,” she said, as she began to describe him. His “tragic ending did not define his life.”
Quelly “loved basketball, computers, art, fitted hats, and his family.” He loved art so much he would “make anything his canvas” including his notebook and even his arm, she said.
Quelly played basketball for an Amateur Athletic Union team called the New Haven Heat.
Caldwell recalled the first time she saw Quelly play basketball, saw how hard he worked on the court during a game. The next day when he came in to class, she burst into cheers and applause.
“What, miss?” Quelly asked. He said his team had lost, he didn’t deserve the cheers.
“You didn’t give up, so you won,” Caldwell said. “Now you’ve got to win in class.”
She said she was able to connect with Quelly through basketball, to help him to work as hard in class.
Quelly signed up for extra help after school, and his test scores shot up. After he finished one reading test on the computer, he called out, “Miss! Miss! Miss! You’ve got to come over here!” The computer showed his score had quadrupled from a year before.
“The look on his face was better than money,” Caldwell said.
Redente, who coaches the New Haven Heat, shared another story of Quelly’s success. Redente said one of Quelly’s teachers asked him to come see Quelly play when he was in 6th grade, to see if he might join Redente’s travel team. The coach showed up during an 8th-grade gym class and noticed one boy — an 8th-grader, he figured — who was running the court. “He was giving it to everybody in the 8th grade.”
When is this 6th grader going to show up? he asked the teacher who’d invited him.
“He’s the guy over there beating everybody,” the teacher replied.
Redente put Quelly on the team, and the boy was always the first one at practice. The team would show up and “he’d be sitting on the stands, waiting for us.”
As the team traveled the northeast, Quelly proved to be a fierce competitor, Redente recalled. Just before halftime at one game, Quelly took a pass and went coast to coast, spun, and put the ball in as the buzzer sounded. He jumped up and down, yelled and beat his chest. (Click on the play arrow to watch.)
“That’s the Quelly I want to remember,” Redente said.
Shortly after 1 p.m., six tearful pallbearers loaded Quelly’s casket — draped with his basketball uniform — into a waiting car. After placing the coffin in the hearse, two young men burst into tears and embraced.
