RIP marks the spot

Back in September, when word first got around that a local teen was felled by police bullets, the memorial began.

A balloon here, a balloon there, had first appeared. Then there were the stuffed animals and the cards and candles.

The house on Kirkglen Loop had become a shrine, a place where people paid tribute to a life lost, a tragedy that never should have been.

One night a man came with his little boy. They stood in front of the flickering candles and the man, when asked, said he was there because it could have been his son.

The record ultimately will reflect that what occurred Sept. 23 was a conspiracy of awful circumstance that exploded into a death. Kids were playing with toy guns that look real; somebody called the cops and the cops came. A kid stepped out of the abandoned house’s door and in that instant, with a gun that by all appearances looked real, became one police officer’s nightmare.

Four shots were fired and the kid went down

And there are two especially sad elements to this whole picture.

Criticism of the officer has shape-shifted, from claims that the teen did not have a gun in his hand to claims that the officer fired too many shots.

One is specious. The second likely will not be supported by the forensics.

Valid questions regarding the number of shots fired arise when a magazine is emptied. That didn’t happen in this case; from the time the body was examined it was clear that only three shots fully found their mark and that one produced more of a graze wound.

One slug is too many in a case where the circumstances and evidence indicate that a weapon is fired by mistake, even when the mistake is legitimately grounded in an officer’s fear for his safety.

Law enforcement officers are trained that they must continue firing – once the decision to fire has been made – until the perceived threat to them or others has been eliminated.

That might take one bullet, three, four or more.

Specifics on these issues will be made public soon, and the time for further discussion will be then.

But there is in the meantime a more pressing issue to be dealt with, an important reminder of fact that must never be lost in the shuffle of political, procedural or legal argument.

The young man whose life was snuffed out had a name, Cameron Tillman.

He was 14-years-old and liked Sponge Bob, liked to cook for his grandmother and take care of his young cousins. Cameron Tillman loved the beach – he had been to Galveston and adored it – and he was on the cusp of manhood when he was claimed.

Cameron Tillman had his whole life ahead of him and did well in his studies while also showing athletic promise. And nobody, the police included, has made any strong case that he was involved with bad things, committed crimes, had ever hurt anyone or intended to do so.

At the moment of his death, however, as a component of boyhood folly, he took on an appearance in the eyes of a police officer wishing to return home to his family a sinister form, one that he likely never intended – at least not in the eyes of the officer – and for that lone mistake Cameron Tillman paid with his life, leaving so many to mourn.

The balloons, largely deflated, along with the cards and the candles and all other signs of the memorial, are now in a trashcan outside the house on Kirkglen Loop. For someone who didn’t know better, these are would appear as signs of a party for some child, mementoes of a time well-had, items of memory caught on a cell-phone today or in the past on Kodachrome.

In their trashcan resting place, they are overshadowed by the scrawls of RIP on the boards that cover the house, intended to keep others from playing in it.

Personally, I would rather remember the memorial as it was, a living and colorful celebration of a life well lived until the fateful moment, the joy of balloons a reminder of all of the good.

I would rather that the difficult lessons emerging from this tragedy might be used to save other lives, that kids won’t pick up simulated pistols that look so real but aren’t. I would rather that when the shouting, the legal maneuvers and the procedural matters are all done, that what will remain are memories of a good and playful teenager.

Because all of that is what defines the scope of the tragedy that occurred, diminishing not just this one child’s family but all of us, because all of us should claim him as our child.