FOCUS: MONTH OF MURDERS
A mother mourns her innocent son, killed by a stray bullet while leaving a dance
Gangs are using guns to settle scores, with victims caught in crossfire
Call it a mother’s intuition. The loving bond between Maura Evans and her 16-year-old son, Matthew L. Elliott, was so strong that she lay in her bed feeling throbbing pains in her stomach while her son was blocks away, lying in the street with a gunshot wound to his head.
“My stomach had a queasy feeling,” she recalled. “I heard a fire truck go down the street and the way it sounded, I just knew they were going for my son. I just felt it. I heard an ambulance, so I sat on the edge of my bed, and I waited for the knock.”
That dreaded knock came Saturday night.
Matthew is among the city’s most recent homicide victims, one of three people killed last weekend on Buffalo’s East Side.
Nine slayings — almost half of the 22 homicides so far this year — were recorded in the past month.
Police and community leaders blame much of the spike on an increase in gang activity and criminals using guns to settle scores.
But the violence also has taken the lives of Matthew and 21-year-old Drayton Collins, both described by police as innocent bystanders.
“These were young people who were shot down in the prime of their lives,” Buffalo Police Chief of Detectives Dennis J. Richards said Tuesday. “Our investigation is showing that both Elliott and Collins were not the intended targets.”
The bloodshed has thrust their families into immense heartache.
After Matthew’s mother was driven to Erie County Medical Center, she hovered over her son’s dead body.
“I was hurting,” she said Tuesday morning as, surrounded by family members and friends, she cried uncontrollably in her Michigan Avenue living room.
“He was still warm when I touched his hand,” she recalled. “I touched his shoulder. I touched his chest. I rubbed his neck. I touched his little toes.
“I ripped off that John Doe tag on his wrist, and I told them. ‘His name is Matthew Lawrence Elliott. He is not a John Doe,’ ” she said angrily, her bottom lip trembling.
“He is not a John Doe. That’s my baby. . . . That’s my baby.”
The doting mother and son had been inseparable. She still washed and ironed his clothes and trimmed his toenails.
He was preparing to enter his senior year at East High School in September. At 6 foot 3, he towered over his classmates and played on the school’s track and field, cross country and basketball teams.
But at home, he was a loving momma’s boy, who wore his mother’s fluffy pink slippers just to feel close to her. He also loved watching Rachael Ray’s cooking shows on the Food Network and pretended to be a gourmet chef by preparing elaborate meals for his family.
“He was like a gentle giant,” said Evans, who has four other children, 17 to 24 years old.
“He was a momma’s boy. He wouldn’t admit it, but everyone knew it, too.”
Evans’ daughter Marquita Cole, 24, sat beside her, caressing her hair to comfort her as tears streamed down their faces.
“He was a good boy,” his mother said, rocking back and forth on her sofa. “He was my baby. They took my baby from me.”
Matthew had dreamed of playing on a National Basketball Association team, but his mother always stressed the importance of education and had taken her five children to the library every other week when they were younger.
A former teacher in Buffalo Public Schools, she taught fifth grade at School 38 while her son was a seventh-grade student there.
“He would always say, ‘I’m going to college like my mom did,’ ” said Evans, 42, who now works as rehabilitation assistant at the Buffalo Psychiatric Center. “I was so proud of him. I’m proud of all my kids.”
But instead of buying a new suit for her son to wear at his high school graduation next year, his mother bought a new black suit this week for him to wear in his wooden casket.
His funeral services will be held at noon Friday in Word of Faith Church of God in Christ, 299 E. Utica St., preceded by a wake at 11 a.m.
Matthew was among about 100 youths who attended a teen dance Saturday night at the Friends of the Elderly Youth and Family Center, 118 E. Utica St.
When the dance ended, a fight erupted outside and a gunman opened fire, striking a young man. Matthew was hit by a stray bullet.
Hours later, on Sunday morning, Drayton Collins was shot on Andover Avenue. He ran into the Engine 23 firehouse at Collingwood Street at Bailey Avenue and told a firefighter that he had been shot. He later died in the hospital.
“These were bright, articulate young people who were caught up in the madness of someone else’s foolishness,” said Arlee Daniels Jr. of the Stop the Violence Coalition. The group will hold a peace vigil at 8 p.m. Thursday at the site where Matthew was gunned down.
Police officials are urging anyone who knows anything about these homicides to contact police.
“We really need people to come forward in order to clear these cases,” Richards said, adding that people with information should call the Buffalo police tip line at 847-2255 or the Homicide Unit at 851-4466.
Evans echoed the plea, saying: “I don’t want another mother to go through the hurt I’m going through. I just want someone to come forward if they know anything.”
A Month of Murders
Kevin M. Smith, 34, who had been beaten and stabbed, was found dead June 3 inside a Chenango Street apartment where he had been staying. Dennis Ray Washington, 46, of Fairfield Avenue, Niagara Falls, apparently became embroiled in a dispute with Smith that ended in Smith's death. Washington was charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon. (Cleared with one arrest)
Aretha Martin, 37, was found shot to death in a vacant lot near Walden Avenue and May Street on June 5. She went missing after apparently witnessing the May murder of Raymond Johnson Jr., 30, who was found shot to death in a vehicle. It is believed Martin may have witnessed Johnson's murder and tried to flee. (Unsolved)
Jermaine Martin, 19, of Shirley Avenue, was standing with friends when he was shot to death on Bailey Avenue, near Stockbridge Avenue, on June 7. Gerald Gibson, 18, was later captured in Pittsburgh after police there took him off a bus that had arrived from Philadelphia. He is facing murder and weapons charges in the slaying. (Cleared with one arrest)
Kenneth Williams, 30, of Cambridge Avenue, was fatally shot at Comstock and Kensington avenues in his rented SUV on June 14. (Unsolved)
Gregory Milhouse, 21, of Winspear Avenue, was shot in the abdomen while he was on the front porch of a house in the 100 block of Bickford Avenue, near Orleans Street on June 22. Several shots were fired toward the house, striking Milhouse once. (Unsolved)
Sebrun Daniels, 36, of Buffalo, was shot in a parking lot in the 1300 block of Jefferson Avenue on June 28. (Unsolved)
William Benton, 43, of Roslyn Avenue, was choked to death during a fight at 261 Woltz Ave. on July 5. Police said they charged DeMario Steele, 48, of 261 Woltz, with felony manslaughter. (Cleared with One arrest)
Matthew Elliott, 16, of Michigan Avenue, was fatally shot by a stray bullet outside the Friends of the Elderly Youth and Family Center at 118 E. Utica St. at the end of a teen dance attended by a large group of young people on July 5. (Unsolved)
Drayton Collins, 21, was stuck by a stray bullet on Andover Avenue on July 6. He ran into a firehouse, Engine 23, 106 Collingwood St., at Bailey Avenue, where he told a firefighter that he had been shot. (Unsolved)
