LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Friends and family transformed the scene of a deadly shooting into a memorial for Angelica James Monday night.
Police said Christopher Gordon killed James Sunday and shot her 10-year-old son in the hand. Investigators say Gordon then took their two-year-old son, but he was found safe hours later. Police are still looking for Gordon.
They said she was like the glue that held them all together. "That's how we all knew each other," friend Nakesah Marshall said. "Because of her, yeah, because of her."
In life, James made her friends feel like part of the family. In her death, she still bonds them together.
They stood with candles and balloons in the same spot they found James dead. They said the candles represented a fresh start and the balloons were purple, Angelica's favorite color, a symbol of royalty.
"She's up in heaven and she's looking down on all of us," one person said, in a line of friends sharing memories. "And she's waving her hand up to let us know, She's okay now. She's better."
As balloons floated into the sky, they stood, grounded by her memory at their feet and her friends beside them.
Marshall said, "Her life being taken, it's like a piece of us left too."
With James gone, her friends said they'll step in to make sure her children hear story after story of the mother they loved. That includes her two-year-old son they're holding in this photo from Monday night.
"Oh she loved her kids, and they loved her," friend Desmontay Green said. "That was an unbreakable bond."
Now, they say they'll be there for her boys just like she was there for them. A bond, unbreakable.
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