Elijah DeWitt’s mother wants the world to know why he is more than ‘the kid who died in a parking lot’

When Elijah DeWitt was a baby, he skipped the long naps normal for his age.

The habit concerned his mother, Dawn DeWitt, to the point that she asked her paediatrician if anything was wrong.

His response, she recalls to The Independent, was: “Miss DeWitt, he was born ready for life.”

On 5 October, 18-year-old Elijah’s life was brutally ripped away when he was shot in the parking lot of the Sugarloaf Mills Mall in Lawrenceville, Georgia, while on a date with his girlfriend of five years. Two suspects in his killing have since been arrested.

In the aftermath of the crime, the rising football star became another face of tragedy in the local and national news. But beyond the devastating circumstances in which he died, there’s a macrocosm of all the things Elijah did and embodied, Ms DeWitt says.

He was his little sister’s protector, his aunt’s “perfect dream,” his girlfriend’s absolute love, and his parents’ “soul warrior.”

“He was so focused on getting to the next level in football and doing good in school. Being in practice and working out and taking this whole vitamin set to be as healthy as he could,” Ms DeWitt says.

“That’s Elijah, not the kid who just died in a parking lot.”

Eager to shine a light on Elijah’s unwavering determination and fierce character above the crime that cut his life short, his mother is choosing to navigate grief along with forgiveness in order to make sense of the senseless tragedy.

“There is a justice to be served, a hundred per cent, but I’m not gonna walk around holding anger because I can’t hold the memories and the grief and the love for Elijah in my soul right now,” she says, less than two weeks after Elijah’s death. “That just weighs me down.”

Elijah was born loving sports, his mother says.

“We potty trained him by putting a little kid basketball goal and a ball, and let him sit there and shoot,” Ms DeWitt fondly recounts. “He just always loved [sports]. He loved playing anything with a bowl. So when he was little, he played football, basketball, and baseball.”

Most recently, he had been on a 4,000-5,000-calories-a-day diet and took a whole vitamin set to keep up with the rigorous training that he had committed to.

On the day he died, Elijah had asked Ms DeWitt to call his Jefferson High School coach to deliver good news; he had gotten a call to visit the University of Georgia (UGA).

“Elijah was focused on wanting to be a D-1 football player. His ultimate goal would’ve been to take it to the next level and go to the NFL,” Ms DeWitt says. “But he knew college was his next step.”

Elijah was interested in studying finance and had been working with his family and coaches on putting together highlight films of his games. UGA was likely not to be the only offer to come his way.

“He had just sat down with one of his coaches here at Jefferson and was getting all his stuff ready to roll out to additional colleges,” Ms DeWitt adds.

“That was consuming most of his time. They practised in the morning and then they did stuff in the afternoon, and then he would go work out go do some [more] training.”

Somehow, Elijah also found spare time to dedicate to his family, his high school sweetheart, his lizard, his leper gecko and cats, and — his mom remembers with a laugh — to his Xbox.

“Elijah was what I call a gentle giant. He was fierce. He was not scared of things. He was very confident, but he was also super kind,” she tells The Independent.

“And if a kid did not have what they needed to wear, He would let me know and we would get it and he would slip it in their locker and wouldn’t say a word about it.”

His laidback personality earned him the nickname “Easy E” from NFL star Cam Newton.

“He could get along with anyone, and that’s kind of where the name ‘Easy’ came from, because he was just so easygoing,” Ms DeWitt says. “But then on the football field or on the basketball court, you know, he just got the job done.”

Although her son’s dreams have been cut short, Ms DeWitt says she is choosing to focus on the memories of her son, the love the community has shown and the silver linings.

“There was such a bigger life behind a shooting at the mall. His life is so much bigger than that, and that’s what’s important to me to share,” she says.

Ms DeWitt adds that she is especially grateful for the outpouring of support in the face of pain.

The days following Elijah’s death have been easily the worst thing that has happened to the DeWitt family, but they’ve also been filled with memorial services organised by friends, students, football teammates and coaches who were so touched and inspired by Elijah that they could not fit everything they had to say about “Easy E” in just one vigil.

“The night that Elijah died, our pastor came to the mall to support us. He and his wife and my daughter’s youth pastor,” Ms DeWitt recalls. “And so I just said to him, ‘Through this darkness, there’s got to be a light in this.’”

Two days after the shooting, suspects Kemare Bryan, 18, and Chandler Richardson, 19, were arrested in South Carolina and have since been extradited back to Georgia on felony murder charges. A motive for the attack has not been revealed, but police said an altercation occurred between the three teens before Elijah was shot.

A week after Elijah’s death, as unanswered questions remained over the circumstances, the family mustered up every bit of energy they had to attend a football game that their son should’ve been playing in.

“Those kids playing have been part of our family for 12 years, 13 years,” Ms DeWitt says. “It was very difficult to go, but we wanted to support them. And then the school that we played, They honoured him and just were so kind to our Jefferson [High School] family.”

For the DeWitts, it is important to reconcile their loss and the need to do something proactive with the situation they’re in now. They’re spending a lot of the time crying, Ms DeWitt notes, reminiscing and remembering.

Plenty of reminders lay around the house; his clothes, his hair brushes, his whole room and everything that encompassed his life.

“And I say that this grief is so big that you take it, but you take it for a minute,” Ms DeWitt says as she chokes back tears. “You fill it and then you go, ‘Okay, I’ve gotta do something positive.’ I just want to be positive in the most horrific situation I’ve ever experienced.”

With the more than $51,000 raised on a GoFundMe page in the loving memory of Elijah, Ms DeWitt says the family is trying to figure out a way to give back.

Ms DeWitt is also determined to help other families avoid the unbearable pain hers is experiencing.

“I don’t watch the news a lot, but I’ve turned it on lately because there were nights I could not sleep. I would look on that screen and see him with the football in his arms and dream of him being in college,” Ms DeWitt says.

“But then I would see, oh, this shooting, this shooting, this robbery. We cannot desensitize ourselves to the fact that children, people are being murdered.”

“I think that’s a huge onion that is layered big time. I don’t know the answer but I’m going to try to be an advocate in some way if I can. If I can help one family or one kid not go down that road, that’s one less,” she adds.

As she continues to process life without Elijah, Ms DeWitt is sure of one thing; Elijah cannot speak anymore, but his family can and how they represent him matters.

“I try to have a very forgiving heart because the loss we have is so big to hold onto anger,” she says. “There’s just no place.”