The 15-year-old boy shot and killed on a Metro platform in Northeast D.C. the day before Easter was honored Friday in an emotional "home-going" ceremony attended by his high school classmates.
Davonte Washington's fellow junior ROTC cadets lifted the teenager's casket onto a horse-drawn carriage headed to a service at First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Landover, Maryland.
Washington was respectful and kind, loved ones and teachers from Largo High School said less than two weeks after the ninth-grader was gunned down in a crime D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier called "senseless."
"Your son was amazing. Your son was incredible. And your son was wonderful," Washington's English teacher, Anton Washington, said. "Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to teach your child."
A 17-year-old boy Washington's family said was a stranger shot the 15-year-old March 26 in the Deanwood Metro station. The shooter, who police said was suspect Maurice Bellamy, approached Washington after asking why he was looking at him, witnesses told police.
Washington was sitting with his mother and two younger sisters in a Plexiglass shelter on the Metro platform, waiting for a train, when a young man tapped on the glass, Victor Leonard, Washington's grandfather, said Washington's mother told him.
The stranger asked Washington why he was looking at him and if he knew him from somewhere. Washington replied, "What?"
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The young man shot Washington twice in the chest and ran away, witnesses said.
The teen was rushed to a hospital, where he died.
"Of all the tragic things that we see when it comes to violence, nothing is more senseless than this case," the D.C. police chief said after the killing. "There's no reason for it. "
Pastor Jay Cameron echoed the police chief's comments Friday at the funeral.
"This makes no sense. He was not in the middle of those things that you would say, 'You know, perhaps that should have happened.' He was minding his business," he said.
The pastor called for an end to violence among young people.
"We say enough -- enough of our boys being killed, enough of our girls being killed, enough of the killing," Cameron said.
Bellamy was identified as the suspect after police compared video surveillance footage from the Metro station to a database of juvenile offenders, court documents say.
The 17-year-old boy, who was charged with second-degree murder, is due in court later this month.
Washington's grandfather urged mourners to keep the boy's memory alive.
"We will not let Davonte's name go in vain," he said. "I promise you."
