Boy Who Dreamed Big Dies From Gunfire

Tyriek B. Keyes dreamed of becoming a dancer. He dreamed of buying his mother a big house on a hill. His dreams were shot down at the age of 14, snuffed out by gunfire on the streets of Newhallville.

Police said the shooter, in a passing car, targeted Keyes when he shot him around 9:30 p.m Sunday on Bassett Street.

He died Thursday in the hospital at 12:09 a.m. Police have not yet announced any arrest in the case or a motive for the shooting.

At his home on Read Street Thursday, mom Demethra Telford remembered Tyriek as a big-hearted dreamer. He told her he planned to buy her a big house on a hill in Chicago, with no one in sight.

Keyes planned to make it big as a dancer. His mom cleared all the furniture out of the living room, storing it in the basement at their Newhallville home, to give him room to practice moves and record YouTube videos.

Tyriek, affectionately called ​“Ressee” was a youth dancer with the local Ice The Beef organization’s Education and the Stage program. In the past year and a half, he performed 58 times across the city, said Ice The Beef Organizer Chaz Carmon. That included a coreographed dance honoring Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin, in which Tyriek played a surgeon.

(Click on the video to watch him dance.)

“He loved dancing, he wasn’t into the drug game, he wasn’t into guns, and he just loved to danced,” said Carmon. ​“He was a really good kid.”

The message stuck, Telford said. ​“He wasn’t a bad kid at all. He never got into any problems at all. He was my baby,” she said. ​“He used to sit in that chair right over there, and I would sit right here, and he would say, ​‘Mommy, let me rub your feet.’”

“He had big dreams, big dreams. He saw my struggle as a single parent. He wanted to get out too,” Telford said. ​“He had a lot of potential and he lost his life at a young age. He never got the chance to follow his dreams.”

This summer, Keyes broke his thumb playing ball, and doctors wrapped his hand in a cast. ​“He wanted that cast off so bad. ​‘I’m gonna get it off,’ he’d say. He got it off the wrong way,” Telford said.

On Sunday, Keyes came home and asked his mom what she was cooking for dinner. Hamburgers and rice, she said, joking that she couldn’t bear to stand over the stove in the humidity. Keyes told her he’d be back in a bit.

Telford sensed something awry almost immediately. She tried to call her son back in, but he was already off. She couldn’t take the pills for her diabetes and back pain.

Twenty minutes later, somebody came to the house and said her son had been shot. She ran out to the street with no shoes on. ​“Not me, not my baby” echoed in her head. ​“He had so much ahead of him,” she said she thought.

In four days at the hospital, Telford said her son fought hard to pull through. He couldn’t say much, but he could occasionally look over at her and gesture. On Thursday morning, Telford said she loved him, that she’d always be near him and that she’d find justice for him and make sure that people go to jail for killing her son. He nodded, and tears streamed down his face, Telford recalled.

At 10 years old, Tyriek was among the kids helping retired cop Stacy Spell plant the ​“Red Hen” community garden in West River. At the time, Spell said Tyriek had been skeptical when he first came by: ​“It don’t look like a garden,” he said. When Tyriek kept coming back to help, Spell gave him his own bucket to grow his own food. On Monday, he helped Spell pour water onto his plants. And he pointed out tomato and pepper plants. Spell said the garden gives kids like Tyriek ​“a sense of ownership” over a pot of soil, a garden, and hopefully, a neighborhood. Spell said the more gardening Tyriek can do, the more he’ll stay out of trouble.

“Tragically, gun violence has claimed the life of another city resident; this time the sadness we all feel is compounded by the youthful age of the victim,” Mayor Toni Harp said in a press release Thursday. ​“On behalf of all city residents I mourn with his family, I praise the first responders and hospital staff who tried to save his life, I condemn the casual use and glut of these guns, and I appreciate the ongoing efforts of the police department in its continuing investigation.”

​“This young student had just completed 8th grade at Fair Haven – the entire school community is heartbroken by these tragic circumstances,” the release quoted schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo. ​“School and district staff have been in constant contact with the family since the shooting and the district’s Youth and Family Services Division, trauma team, and community partners remain available to support students and staff affected by the tragedy.”

Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn had spent time in the hospital with the family this week as they kept vigil with Tyriek. ​“I’m just crushed,” Clyburn said. She said the family had moved into the neighborhood only recently in an emergency placement.

A recent graduate from Fair Haven Middle School, Tyriek was anxious to start at Hillhouse High School in just over a month, where he planned to try out for the football and basketball teams.

Just recently, to get ready for the coming school year, his mom took him shopping for new shoes. He picked out a pair of New Balance, wavered and said he really wanted Jordans. Out of his mom’s price range, she promised she’d save up and buy it for him.

And she still will, Telford said in her living room on Thursday afternoon, surrounded by family, friends, and local police supporters. ​“They’re gonna go with him,” she said of the burial plans. ​“I gave him that promise.”

Lucy Gellman contributed reporting.