CORRECTION

Ruth Sheehan's column in the June 4 City & State section incorrectly stated that town officials set aside a day to honor a boy killed in an accident in a Holly Springs subdivision. A plaque to honor the boy was placed in a garden outside the town's library in a ceremony attended by Mayor Dick Sears and other town officials. But the boy's family, friends and concerned community members paid for the plaque and planned the ceremony.

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Denise Mangum Coates and her fiance were cooking dinner when they heard a gunshot outside.

She didn't think much of it. She and her sons had been renting a duplex at the edge of a neighborhood known for gang activity. But this was Holly Springs, Coates' hometown.

Then her youngest son, Sharrod, started screaming, "D.J.'s shot, Mom! D.J.'s shot!"

Moments later, Coates' 18-year-old son staggered into the room and collapsed in a chair.

"At first, I thought the boys were messing with me," Coates said. "Then I saw the blood bubbling out of his mouth."

Coates' son Hakeem, then 15, knelt in front of D.J., pleading with him to hang on.

"I said, 'Talk to me, D.J., talk to me,' " Hakeem said. "All he said was, 'Oh God, oh God.' "

D.J. died on an operating table at Wake Med Raleigh.

That was two years ago today.

D.J. Mangum, a star basketball player at Middle Creek High School, had been shot in the stomach while standing on his front porch. The reason: He was wearing a red hooded sweat shirt.

The two men convicted in his death testified at trial that they'd mistaken D.J. for a member of a rival gang. Because he was wearing red.

One of the men received eight to 10 years in prison. The other is already free.

"I don't think any kind of justice got served," Coates said.

That outcome still eats at Coates. What hurts more is that some people still assume her son was a gang member -- and got what he deserved.

"D.J. wasn't in any gang," Hakeem said. "He was trying to keep himself out of trouble so he could play ball."

On the night of the shooting, D.J. pulled on the red hoodie after returning from a swim with his girlfriend and Sharrod.

He was a victim -- yet somehow tainted by the violence -- a fact D.J.'s friends stress time and again.

Alex Javidi, 17, a junior at Holly Springs High School, got to be friends with D.J. during pickup games of basketball when they both attended Middle Creek.

He noted the difference in the public's reaction in 2006, when a 7-year-old boy in Holly Springs' affluent Sunset Ridge subdivision was run over and killed in his driveway.

"That was a tragic accident," said Alex, who lives in Sunset Ridge. "People put up white flags and balloons. But here goes my friend D.J., shot in the stomach, murdered in cold blood, and there's nothing."

The town of Holly Springs set aside a day to honor the memory of the child killed in his driveway. But there was never a day to honor D.J.

His mother, brother and friends believe that is because D.J. was black.

"It's because he was black that he was mistaken for a gang member in the first place," Alex said, staring me down as he made his point. "Your kid could wear a red hoodie anywhere, and he wouldn't get shot, because he's white."

Coates had returned to Holly Springs in part to get away from the insanity of gangs. "It was safe," she said. "It was home."

But sudden violence can shatter notions of safety and security, leaving a mother grieving two years after her son's death. Coates wishes her hometown would remember that D.J. was more than the town's first murder victim in a decade, that he wasn't a gang-banger caught in a crossfire over colors.

She wants him remembered as a good kid who died too soon.

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