15-year-old shot to death in Cleveland after leaving community meeting on fatal housing police shooting

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A 15-year-old Cleveland boy was shot to death late Wednesday shortly after he left a community meeting on a fatal police-involved shooting, officials said.

Anthony Hughes Jr. was well-known and beloved member of King Kennedy’s Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Ohio and student at James F. Rhodes High School. He died after an unidentified shooter fired dozens of bullets as Hughes was walking home, according to police and Boys & Girls Club officials.

Hughes on Wednesday participated in a listening session at the Boys & Girls Club in the King Kennedy public housing complex about the shooting of Arthur Keith, a 19-year-old man killed last month by a Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority officer.

Hughes and Keith lived in the same public housing building for year, Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Ohio CEO Jeff Scott said. Scott said the club set up extended hours for members grieving over Keith’s death.

“This is crippling,” Scott said. “Every time something like this happens it’s debilitating. This is beyond that. He was a good kid. He wasn’t into anything bad. He was just a sweet kid.”

Hughes participated in the meeting and said his goal was to spend more time with his father, Scott said. Myesha Crowe, the director of the Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance that is affiliated with the club, said Hughes talked about wanting to play professional basketball overseas someday.

Scott left the club about 7:30 p.m. and went to his aunt’s house, Scott said. About an hour later he was walking home with two other teens on Scovill Avenue near East 55th Street in the city’s Central neighborhood when someone drove by and opened fire.

One witness told 911 dispatchers they heard about 50 shots, according to a police dispatch report. Scott said Hughes was shot about 16 times.

A 43-year-old man walking in the area was also shot in the shoulder, according to police. An ambulance took him to MetroHealth in critical condition. No arrests have been made in the case.

King Kennedy Boys & Girls Club director Richard Starr, who has spoken out against the police killing of Keith and other deadly violence of young kids in the neighborhood, was too distraught to talk about Hughes’ death, Boys & Girls Club spokesman Ken Wood said.

Starr sent a statement through Wood on Wednesday decrying the violence and said Hughes and his friends had even talked about taking the safest route home.

“Enough is enough,” Starr’s statement said. “I just don’t understand this. Now a kid can’t walk home without being shot at, just because he lives in a certain neighborhood? They were even talking about taking the safest route home.”

Starr said Hughes enjoyed playing basketball at the center with his friends.

“Anthony was such a good kid,” Starr said. “He was a kid who always had a smile on his face. There isn’t a single thing I could say about Anthony that is negative.”

Crowe said Hughes’ is the third current or former member of the King Kennedy Boys & Girls Club killed by gun violence this year. Ten children under age 18 have been killed in Cleveland so far in 2020, the same number as last year.

The death also marked the 175th homicide of the year in the city, tying 1991 as the worst year for homicides in recent history. He was also the sixth person under age 16 to be shot since Nov. 17, including several two 2-year-olds and a 3-year-old.

Crowe, whose organization aims at reducing violence in Cleveland, said they will work with the family and help organize the funeral and any memorial that the family wishes to hold. She also said they will work to prevent retaliatory violence, which has a higher chance of happening when young children are killed.

Both Crowe and Scott said Hughes’ death made them re-think how they are providing services to the community and are left wondering what else they can do.

“We need to rally around Anthony,” Scott said. “No politicians, no law enforcement agency, no one is coming to help us. We feel like we’re in it alone sometimes. The club is the safe haven for our kids and being here together is makes a difference. But when one of those kids is senselessly gunned down, how do you help make sense of that for the rest of our kids?”