Fighting grief with laughter, friends toast Raleigh’s Andy Banks, found dead in Va.
More than 200 mourners poured into the parking lot of Raleigh’s closed K&W restaurant Friday night, all of them holding candles to remember their slain friend Andy Banks, hugging each other around a vase full of sunflowers.
An uncomfortable silence fell over the crowd, speechless with grief, standing on the spot where Banks was last seen before vanishing last Saturday, when a voice cried out, “Somebody say something funny!”
So for the next two hours, the speakers took turns recalling the 39-year-old Banks, who lived with the joy of an 8-year-old at a birthday party.
He was the sort of man who always knew where to find the best beer specials on a Sunday afternoon, how to buy a truck for cheap, fix it up and sell it for a better one, how to live the good life on Chase Rewards points.
He once spent a summer in Charleston but didn’t have a bed for his room, but he noticed that a mattress store offered a 90-day money-back guarantee. So he made sleeping arrangements.
Banks would help you move to your new home when he barely knew you. If you were tired of your job and wanted a new life, he would urge you to quit and move in with him. He would babysit your kids, and before you got back, he would have taken them to Subway, Starbucks and McDonald’s.
He drove a red 1970s Cadillac El Dorado — painted the color of his beloved N.C. State University Wolfpack — and would loan it to for your wedding pictures.
Above all, his crowd of friends emphasized, he wouldn’t want anyone to lose faith and think the world a lousy place. Even after his death.
“I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel rage and anger,” said Levi Boyd, his friend since college. “I’m working through this to find something positive. Andy had no reservations that he was going to live forever, and yet to be so willing to give your time to so many, I feel guilt that don’t give so freely. I’ll never be the same having known Andy.”
Friday night’s vigil came just a few hours after his accused killer, Justin Fernando Merritt, of Danville, appeared in a Wake County courtroom to face murder charges.
Merritt stood silently as District Court Judge Ned Mangum told him he would be held in the Wake County jail without bond.
Police found what they believe to be Banks’ body in Virginia on Thursday, five days after he disappeared from Cameron Village in Raleigh. On Saturday morning, they announced the body had been positively identified as Banks.
Police have not described the circumstances that led to Banks’ death. Friends said he went to Cameron Village to sell a silver Range Rover he had advertised on Craigslist, one of several ways he earned a living, shunning the 9-to-5 desk-job life.
High school friend and former News & Observer photographer Jason Arthurs recalled Banks telling him that he had rented his car to a woman for a week because she was down on her luck and couldn’t get to work.
“Unconsciously,” Arthurs wrote in a lengthy Facebook tribute, “I think many of us try to distance ourselves from people just because they are different. Andy didn’t.”
Throughout the search for Banks, friends urged people not to attack the suspect, his family or his friends on social media. The accused has a felony record in Virginia and was also charged with having a firearm forbidden by that conviction.
“I’m extremely sad about Andy’s death,” Arthurs wrote, “and when I watched his suspected killer appear in front of a judge, I was also sad about a desperate life that drove someone to take another life just for a used car.”
On Friday night, the speakers fought grief with laughter, which Banks’ memory provided in abundance.
Friend Jenny Hensley recalled a trip to Bald Head Island, where Banks and his cohorts found a mysterious basket of musical instruments and formed an impromptu conga line, playing them.
“The chant was, ‘These pretzels are making me thirsty!’ “ she told the crowd. “When I’m 80, I’m going to be chanting, ‘These pretzels are making me thirsty!’ For Andy!”
As the candles burned down and the stories were finished, one question hung over the crowd.
Where could they find a bar big enough to hold them all?
This story was originally published September 19, 2020 at 10:13 AM.