DETROIT – Family and friends gathered at Central High School in Detroit Monday afternoon for a balloon launch to honor a 17-year-old student who was shot and killed on the city's west side.
Julian Moffet was a star student, earning a 4.0 GPA in high school. But last week he was shot multiple times in the back outside a home in the 14600 block of Whitcomb on Detroit's west side, and he didn't survive.
Moffet had big dreams of attending Eastern Michigan University and eventually playing in the NBA.
On Monday, dozens of people gathered to honor his memory. Detroit Central High School's front lawn was packed with friends and family members grieving and consoling Moffet's mother, Henrietta Palmer.
"It does hurt because that's my only child," Palmer said. "That's the part that hurts the most."
Palmer said her son was her best friend and the "best person she knew." She said her son wanted to play professional basketball and was a straight-A student.
"He was very intellectual beyond his years," Palmer said. "I looked in the book and he was reading and it was 1.5 (years old) and I knew he was special."
Palmer said she had a bad feeling when a new group moved into the neighborhood and started picking fights with her son's friends. But Moffet didn't want her to worry.
"What my son never wanted to do was look me in my eye and tell me his life was in danger," Palmer said. "He knew I would end up in the hospital."
Palmer said she believes Julian "died protecting his friends. He always told me he loved them so much. (They were) his brothers and he wouldn't abandon them.
"I don't have any sorrow, just happy tears. I'm glad I got to share that gift with the world."
She said she hopes the community will continue to remember Moffet as a gift and a young man with a promising future that was taken away too soon.
"Even though I will never have another child, I don't want to," Palmer said. "I could never replace him, and his legacy will live on forever."
Anyone with information about Moffet's shooting death is asked to contact the Detroit Police Department.