Mourners stand shoulder to shoulder for Carrington

CHAMPAIGN – A smiling, helpful boy who liked basketball and computers was remembered at the funeral for 15-year-old Kiwane Carrington on Friday. At the same time that friends and family expressed outrage, they also expressed hope for peace.

Mr. Carrington was fatally shot in an altercation with Champaign police a week ago. The incident, which involved Police Chief R.T. Finney and another officer, who has been placed under paid administrative leave, remains under an investigation led by the Illinois State Police. Few details about what happened have been released.

Pastors speaking at Salem Baptist Church, 500 E. Park St., C, also called for being slow to anger in the controversial situation.

The large church was shoulder to shoulder in the pews, with dozens of people lined along the walls, and the hall was full of the sound of sobbing.

The Rev. Claude Shelby said the church is meant to have up to 550 people in the pews. But the crowd amounted to at least 750, which he said was a record for a funeral there.

The Rev. Jerome Chambers, president of the Champaign County NAACP, said repeatedly "Enough is enough!" and asked "Why did this 15-year-old have to die?"

"Only the truth will save Champaign," he said. But Chambers also asked for patience while the investigation of the shooting continues.

He said "adolescence is a time of turbulence" where "rebellion against authority is to be expected."

Chambers gave a dissertation on the stages of anger, and said rage can lead to temporary insanity. He urged the congregation not to stay in a state of fury.

He disputed a poem on a local blog about Mr. Carrington that begins "Just a Black Boy, Not going to amount to nothing, Mother dead, Father God knows where."

Chambers said the teen was not just another black boy; he was "our black boy" and that he did have a father who saw him even though they didn't live together. Mr. Carrington's mother, Rita Williams, died of cancer a year ago.

Chambers said the boy accepted Christ as his personal savior last year and had more recently been baptized with his father, Albert Carrington of Champaign.

Bishop Lloyd Gwin of the nearby Church Of The Living God also stressed forgiveness of "those who trespass against us."

"God is adamant about us forgiving each other," he said. He also quoted Romans 12:19, "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

Community activist Terry Townsend, who attended the funeral, said he was moved by the pain the children in the audience felt.

But he took issue with pastors who urged the congregation to submit to authority and to not be angry.

"We talked at those kids, not to them. Everybody was more or less lecturing them not to be angry. In this case, the kids aren't resisting arrest; they're resisting injustice. They're thinking, 'I'm not doing anything wrong and they don't have the right to tell me to get on the ground.'"

Other speakers included Richard Kelly of the alternative READY school, who broke into tears remembering his student.

He said "Kiwane wanted to be an astronaut." The young man "wanted to see what space looks like" and find out the nature of the universe.

Seon Williams, a relative who owns the Whip barber shop and cut the boy's hair, said he could see "another Kiwane in the lights in us ... so his light won't go out."

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• Obituaries

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