Posted by Nick Dutton - email
TOLEDO, Ohio (WTOL) - Tragedy grips an east Toledo neighborhood. Toledo police are searching for whoever opened fire outside of the St. Thomas Festival Friday night.
19-year-old Kenneth Kimble Junior was gunned down at the intersection of Idaho and White. When police arrived, they found him lying on the ground with a gunshot wound. They rushed him to Saint Charles Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
But as police search for suspects, Kimble's friends and family cope with the loss of a loved one. A makeshift memorial marks where Kenneth Kimble Junior was found clinging to life Friday night.
His mother is heartbroken, unable to fathom that her oldest son is gone.
"I can't see him there. He's not there to me. I can't image him being there like that," says Kenneth's mom Mary Abrell.
His father, Kenneth Kimble Senior says his son's life was cut short at 19. Kimble had a lot of friends from the neighborhood. They knew him as Kenney, a teen who loved basketball, and was only months away from attaining his GED.
"Unfortunately, this happened. He'll never get a chance to finish that now."
Friends believe Kimble may have been killed trying to keep the peace, when others were looking for a fight.
"Kenny got in the middle of it, because they wanted to jump him. He said, 'No, that's not going to happen,'" says friend Philip Skiles.
Kenneth Kimble Senior says, "He wasn't a trouble maker. And I feel that he was killed in injust. Nobody deserves what he got."
As they grieve together, friends and relatives can only ask why.
"I'd just left him an hour before it happened. And I told him I was going to be right back because we were supposed to hang out," says friend Roxanne Garcia.
"I just hope the people that involved will come forward and turn themselves in," says Kimble Senior.
