Paying respect
Campbell looked forward to his weekly outing at the Chit Chat, his mother says. “Every Wednesday — the same routine. Go there and come home.” If he couldn’t borrow his father’s truck, he’d walk to the club.
Most nights when her son was out, Vernicia Campbell was a light sleeper. She listened for the truck as Poopoo came up the street and pulled into the driveway. Then she could sleep. The night of July 29 and into the next morning, she slept soundly until about 6:30. Two people came to her door, banging and ringing the bell. Come with us, they said. They drove her to the Valero station.
Poopoo had been shot about 6:25. Wearing a gray T-shirt and gray shorts, he sat behind the steering wheel of his father’s truck, but was slumped over toward the passenger seat. A police officer could not find a pulse.
Darica Earl, Campbell’s girlfriend, was at her apartment with Messiah, their baby, when her phone rang. Immediately she went on Twitter, posting a stream-of-consciousness account in real time.
First:
This can’t be true omg why me.
Then:
On my way to Grady.
I hope my bd not gone lord please.
From the hospital:
He gone wtf Ima tell my baby.
He all I had.
And later in the day:
Whoever killed my bd better be ready for war that’s all I gotta say.
Campbell’s parents scheduled the funeral for Aug. 8, a Saturday. All week, his friends put out the word on social media: No guns at the funeral — and no gang colors.
“If you cannot respect his mother,” one friend wrote, “you will not be getting in.”
It was hot the day of the funeral. To accommodate a large crowd, the services were moved from Vernicia Campbell’s church to the more spacious sanctuary at Greenforest Baptist, near I-20 and I-285. Her pastor, the Rev. David Benton, had spoken with Poopoo the previous Sunday about joining Greater Liberty Hill Baptist. Campbell wanted to have Messiah christened, Benton says. “He wanted to make us his church home.”
At the funeral, Benton looked across the crowd of young people. Campbell’s death “shook them up,” he says.
When Benton extended an “invitation to Christ,” he says, 80 to 100 mourners approached the altar.
The horse-drawn hearse waited outside. It led the procession west on Rainbow Drive, then north on Candler Road. It passed the Chit Chat and the Valero. It turned into Campbell’s neighborhood and went by his house. Finally, with traffic stopped on Candler, it crossed over to Resthaven.
Eight pallbearers, dressed all in white, lifted Campbell’s casket from the hearse. Funeral attendants released two white doves into the sky.
Then they placed white chrysanthemums on top of the casket and lowered it into the red-clay earth.
ABOUT THIS STORY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution examined alleged gang activity in south DeKalb County after a grand jury charged nine people in connection with a series of five homicides that occurred from mid-May through late July. The newspaper relied on multiple sources: police reports and court files, interviews with family members and lawyers for accused killer and their victims, and social media posts. A reporter also spoke to gang-violence experts from around the nation.
The social media posts, by people directly involved with the case, included real-time descriptions of events described in the story, as well as numerous photographs. Information was taken from public sites on such platforms as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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