'I don’t know how we are going to manage without him': Family remembers 15-year-old killed in Over-the-Rhine

CINCINNATI — The family of Shawn Lewis, the 15-year-old who was killed in Over-the-Rhine on Sept. 16, isn't sure how to carry on.

"I don’t know how we are going to manage without him,” said his aunt Valerie McKinney. "We very discombobulated, like, we don’t understand why.”

McKinney said Lewis was a good student who was at the top of his class. She said he cared deeply for his family.

"He was a mama's boy," she said. "He helped his mother all the time."

According to a police report, Lewis got into an altercation with another person. A second person, a 14-year-old, pulled out a gun and shot Lewis who later died at the hospital.

The 14-year-old suspect accused of killing Lewis was in court Tuesday morning. His lawyers filed a motion for a competency evaluation and requested he be released into the custody of his parents. That request was denied by the judge.

The judge said she made the decision to protect the public and the juvenile because police are still searching for the person who got into an altercation with Lewis.

"The kids that did this, [don't] even know the effect that it does to the family. It affects the whole family, the community, everybody. It’s just not fair," McKinney. "I’m just lost for words, I can’t even really explain it. You know, a mother’s cry from her son being murdered is one of the deep-piercing cries that you never want to hear another mother cry."

McKinney knows the pain Lewis’s mother is going through. She said her son was killed a few years ago.

“It brought me back to when I was crying like that for my son was murdered,” she said. “They robbed him and killed him for no reason.”

Monday night, McKinney spoke to a group of teens about the impact gun violence can have on the victim's family. Mitch Morris, who works at Cincinnati Works Phoenix Program, coordinated the meeting whose guest speakers included law enforcement, EMS, a U.S District Attorney and a funeral director.

“We have to continue to educate our kids to the flip side of carrying guns," Morris said. "There’s nothing slick about carrying those guns and there’s a flip side to that,” Morris said. “(We're) losing them on both ends. We speak about that all the time that we got a young person who won’t be with us anymore.”

Morris said it’s time for the community to band together to tackle this issue.

“No one wants to see their child shot and killed or going to the penitentiary for the rest of their life, so we gotta get down here and spread the love through the communities and get people to stand up against this. It’s time to rise up,” he said.

Last night’s meeting was one of several that Morris moderates. Anyone who would like their teen to attend a meeting can email him at mmorris@cincinnatiworks.org.