SHOOTING VICTIM REMEMBERED

Slain teen remembered at Northview Heights vigil

Every morning when Crystal Price gets ready for her day, she listens to a rapper named “Booga-C,” something she calls her daily motivation.

“A lot of days are dark,” she said. “I just don’t want to do it, you know?”

But after listening to the voice of Booga — whose real name is Eugene David III, one of her four children — she does.

A year ago Thursday, Ms. Price was at work and missed calls from those trying to reach her to tell her that her son had been shot to death at Penfort Court and Mount Pleasant Road in Northview Heights, where he was pronounced dead at 2:45 p.m. The 19-year-old had just finished his shift as a laborer in the area when two groups of people started shooting at each other. He was hit in the eye by a stray bullet.

“People used to say he would run for mayor,” Ms. Price said of her son, who had just finished his first year at Community College of Allegheny County and was considering applying to a four-year university.

Cathy Sigmund, chaplain for the Northside Christian Health Center, prayed Thursday among about 100 people during a vigil at the location where Mr. David was killed. She is meeting with the office of Mayor Bill Peduto today in the hopes of getting a grief and trauma counseling center in Northview Heights.

While homicide detectives have told Ms. Price they have surveillance footage, witness statements, and the results of ballistic and fingerprint evidence, she said she is upset that no arrests have been made in her son’s death. Public safety spokeswoman Sonya Toler said the lead detective on the case is “continuing to work all angles.”

Ms. Price’s fiance, Kevin Patterson, who had another son who was shot to death nine years ago in Chicago, said that when he first met Ms. Price, she would come to him at his “sombrous time,” trying to understand what was wrong.

“I would tell her, ‘Listen, I hope you never have to know what it feels like to lose a child,’ ” he said. “It’s just terrible. There’s no feeling to describe it.”

Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette Anvil Price, left, of Forest Hills, sister of Eugene David III, leans on Sharees Jones of the North Side during a memorial vigil Thursday in Northview Heights marking the first anniversary of Mr. David’s shooting death. Natalya Gonzalez of Northview...