By Alex Eriksen
Four months ago Nora Walker buried her son. Soon she’ll do the same for her grandson.
Early Sunday morning, Tyquell Walker, 18, was shot and killed a few blocks from their home on Bayview Avenue in Coney Island.
Police say that Walker was at a party in a housing project at 2839 West 33rd St. There have been no arrests, and police say that they have no idea as to a motive.
Walker’s grandmother, however, has some ideas. She believes her grandson died the same way as other young men have in this neighborhood. There’s an argument, one person goes and gets a gun, comes back, and shoots the other.
The 60th precinct saw 34 murders over the last four years, according to police. Several of them have been in Walker’s neighborhood, say residents. “There is gun violence on the streets of New York,” said a police official. “That’s a reality.”
Nora Walker says did what she could to shield her grandson from that reality. “I never could get him to understand, these things are happening,” she said. She helped raise Tyquell after his mother died when he was only four years old. His father died only four months ago from cancer. Walker says Tyquell had promised him he’d finish high school.
In the lobby of his building his friends and neighbors have erected a memorial to Tyquell. Friends tend to it, relighting candles, hanging pictures, and writing their farewells on the walls. “Friend? said Shamek Thompson. “He was like my brother,”
For those who knew him say Tyquell was a quiet and respectful young man who liked playing sports with his friends. He wasn’t the greatest student at Abraham Lincoln High School but his grandmother says he went every single day. He’d hoped to go to college.
Friends and neighbors remember a cheerful and upbeat kid, but his family knows he struggled with things he often kept to himself. His grandmother says he would sometimes get depressed or angry, especially after his father’s death. “You knew something was wrong when he stopped smiling,” she said.
In addition to the loss of his parents, Tyquell also struggled with having witnessed several murders himself. When he was 13 his grandmother says he came home obviously troubled. A man was gunned down in front of him. But this did not keep him indoors after dark.
She and Tyquell’s cousins agree that he liked to go out at night. “He would leave about 9 o’clock and not come home till late,” said Walker. She added that she would threaten him by saying “I’m going to put on some shoes and come out there and embarrass you.” And she did go looking for him a number of times but never did get to humble him as she would have liked to.
Tyquell would also sometimes get into fights. Not often, and his grandmother and cousins professes that he didn’t like to fight, but he occasionally fell into the kind of behavior that can get you killed in a rough neighborhood. There’s a mentality that comes with living here, his family says, and one not easily avoided. “I hear it so much, ‘I was raised in the ghetto, my mother didn’t have this, my father didn’t have that, that’s no excuse,” says Walker.
In the lobby of the building where Tyquell died, there’s something familiar on the walls. Somewhat faded or painted over are words like “you will be missed,” “rest in peace,” “we will always remember you.” These are not for Tyquell, but addressed to another young man who was murdered here last year. The graffiti memorializes a man known as “Vito.” A few blocks away in Walker’s building the ink is fresh in the goodbyes to “Wezzy.”
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