Linden-McKinley High School officials helped students cope with the death of a classmate on Friday.
Fifteen-year-old Kaewaun D. Coleman was shot in the parking lot of a McDonald's restaurant, located at 2055 Cleveland Ave., at about 3 p.m. on Thursday.
Police said a group of students from Linden-McKinley High School started fighting in an alley not too far from the school, when someone started shooting.
They said Coleman was hit in the alley and stumbled to the parking lot of the McDonald's.
Coleman was taken to OSU Wexner Medical center where he later died.
According to police, calls to 911 were made about a group of high-schoolers fighting in the parking lot. Witnesses reported hearing two or three shots.
When Coleman was 12, he was shot by someone driving by him in his neighborhood. At the time, his mother told 10TV News that she believed he was targeted because of his relatives.
Shortly after that shooting, his mother told 10TV that her son was walking near a park with a friend with a car pulled up beside them.
"He said a guy in a black Caprice pulled up to him and said ‘Are you such-and-such's brother?’ And he said ‘Yeah, why?’ and he said that is when the guy reached out the window and fired two shots,” said Erma Clary.
Clary said a bullet went through her son’s right shoulder in that attack.
She told 10TV on Friday that no one was ever caught in the first incident, and she wants police to find the person who killed her son.
Because of the large crowd at the time of the shooting, police were urging students in the area at the time of the incident to come forward and give officers information about Coleman's death.
School officials told 10TV News on Friday morning that they would have extra security at the building and extra officers around the school.
Jeff Warner, a spokesman for the Columbus City School District, said that it was a different start to the day for students at Linden-McKinley.
Members of City Year Columbus, who normally welcome students to school each day, held candles in honor of Coleman's life.
"No family or school should have to deal with something like this," Warner said.
Warner said that Coleman had a good relationship with school officials.
"A very dynamic young man, very funny, very respectful, always saying 'Yes Ma'am to her," he added.
Community members said that they were working on plans to make the neighborhood around the high school safer.
Resident Randy Linville's home is near the alley where the first fight broke out before the shooting.
"Somebody needs to say something, man, because this is ridiculous," Linville said. "This violence, look at it. Police are everywhere. Somebody's mom is about to be crying tonight."
The resident said that the pain that Coleman's family was feeling was something he was all too familiar with. He lost two half-brothers to gun violence.
"It's up to us as a community to really do something about these guns and these kids," Linville said.
When the shooting occurred, the Bethel AME Church also was struck, sending part of the building crashing to the ground.
"To see it damaging the church, it's frightening," said Pastor Dale Snyder. "Unfortunately, we have these kids of incidents with fights at dismissal of school almost every day."
Snyder said that the wants the violence to be a springboard for action. He wants to create a program so volunteers can walk with students to and from school and be the eyes and ears of the community.
"We want to use our church as a hub, so that we can walk in the neighborhood, report what's going on, give incident report to the police, so that we can deal with the negative things that are going on in our community so we can nip it in the bud," Snyder said.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Columbus Division of Police Homicide division at 614-645-4730.
Tips also can be submitted anonymously to Central Ohio Crime Stoppers at 614-645-TIPS.
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January 17, 2013: Police Release Name Of Teenage Shooting Victim
October 8, 2010: Mother: Boy, 12, May Have Been Shot For Retaliation