Friends and family remember teen killed in shooting

He was going to go to college. He was going be a role model for other kids from the streets of Cambridge. He was going to show everyone how to work hard and make it look effortless.

"He was a perfect guy," said Lucien Christalin's mother, Ginette Grand-Pierre. "My son was just so sweet, so polite. He never hurt anybody."

Police said that on Friday night, 18-year-old Lucien Christalin was killed by a single bullet fired by friends playing with a gun in a Windsor Street home. The boys originally told police he was killed by strangers, but police narrowed the suspects to his friends who tried to ditch the gun.

Born in Boston's Brigham and Women's hospital in 1989 to Haitian immigrants, Christalin had been living in Roosevelt Towers public housing with his sister, Giovana Ditze, after living in Brookline with a cousin.

His was a large family, with sisters Medeline Christalin and Tamara Wedna and brother Jeffrey Grand-Pierre.

Christalin would have graduated Cambridge Rindge and Latin School this year and, according to a teacher who had already written his college recommendation letter, would likely have continued his studies. He was an honor roll student in his freshman, sophomore and junior years of high school.

What could have been

More than 100 teens, parents and friends came out to a vigil at Windsor and Harvard streets Monday night.

"The family is shocked and sad, but happy to see Lucien was loved by so many people," said Tanya Riphin, who held Grand-Pierre's hand throughout the vigil. "We never thought in a million years so many people would come tonight."

Rasmyia Ferej, Christalin's friend and a junior at the high school, said it was nearly impossible to maintain a bad mood around him.

"Lucien always made me laugh," Ferej said. "Even on my worst days, when I was mad, he always found a way to make me smile.

"Just thinking about the memories I shared with him makes me smile. I'll never forget him."

Since his death, Christalin's friends - and he had many - have been keeping his memory alive via a makeshift memorial at the corner of Harvard and Windsor streets.

At the foot of a tree, right across the street from the house where he suffered the gunshot wound that killed him, lie dozens of candles. Around the candles, people have strewn rosaries, stuffed animals and other trinkets.

Some have taped cards and homemade posters to the tree's trunk, each one filled to the corners with scribbled farewells.

One small poster, with a picture of Christalin in the center, read, "Loss of a Soldier, Goin' of an Angel."

As class let out Tuesday afternoon at the nearby Fletcher-Maynard School, middle-school and grade-school children flocked to his memorial to see what had accumulated since they last looked.

"[Christalin] always made time to talk to younger kids," said Yannelys David, a middle-schooler at Fletcher-Maynard. "A lot of the older kids act like they don't have time for you because you're younger, but he always respected his community."

Leader among others

Last week, teacher Eydie Garcia wrote a college recommendation letter for a CRLS senior she said aced every class of hers he ever took.

She'll never send it.