Despite the sweltering heat, Tabyis Paskins and a friend hopped on their bikes early Wednesday to go play video games at an acquaintance's house in Minneapolis. But they never made it.
After an argument erupted between the two men and a group of people outside a nearby home, Paskins, 19, was shot several times as he tried to pedal away to safety, witnesses told police. He died shortly afterward at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale.
It was the city's 18th homicide of the year.
A few hours after the shooting, several of Paskins' friends and relatives gathered at a grassy area a few blocks away from where he was shot to pay their respects. They stood in a circle around longtime peace activist K.G. Wilson under a beating sun, holding hands for a moment of prayer while gospel music blared from a car radio. Several people leaned over to wipe sweat and tears from the face of Paskins' mother, who sat slumped in a lawn chair.
"He was a good person," said his brother, Washington Griffin, 24. "He had a big heart; that's why when they told me that his heart had stopped, I said, 'Damn.' "
Griffin said that their mother, who moved the family from Peoria, Ill. to the North Side several years ago, had raised him and his siblings to be respectful, while constantly stressing staying out of trouble and focusing on their education. Griffin said his brother resisted the lure of the streets, and instead spent most of his time taking care of his paraplegic grandmother.
Others remembered him as a loving and determined young man who was unfailingly loyal to his friends.
"Even though we didn't come from the same mother, that's my brother," said Chris Hogan, 18, as he consoled Paskins' sister.