‘Solve this crime quick.’ Family, friends gather to remember 15-year-old killed in Durham
When Laura Applewhite Grimes came home from work on Sunday, her granddaughter Ariuna Cotton was eagerly planning her 16th birthday party in March.
“She was going to have her Sweet 16,” Grimes recalled. “She was going to rent a hotel room, going out to eat first, then she was going to rent the hotel room and have a party.”
Around 9:30 p.m., Grimes told her granddaughter she was going to sleep, and Cotton said she was going to bed as well.
That was the last time Grimes spoke with her 15-year-old granddaughter. Later that night, Cotton was killed in a shooting that also killed a 19-year-old and injured four other young people.
Thursday night, Grimes and other relatives, including Cotton’s siblings and cousins, gathered with friends and neighbors for a vigil and balloon release to remember the Hillside High student. They wore red T-shirts and brought dozens of red and black balloons.
Standing at the intersection where the shooting happened, they released the colorful balloons, letting them float up into the gloomy, overcast sky.
Not a random shooting
The violence, particularly with so many young people, has rattled the community. Police haven’t announced any suspects or a possible motive in the shooting as of Thursday.
Cotton was traveling in a SUV with six other young people shortly after 3 a.m. early Monday. Gunfire broke out near the intersection of Mathison and Eugene streets, fatally striking Cotton and 19-year-old Isaiah Carrington. Both died at the scene, Durham police said.
Officers responding to the shooting found the SUV, a black Hyundai Santa Fe, crashed into a utility pole. Three girls, ages 12, 13 and 16, and a 13-year-old boy had been shot as well. A 15-year-old boy also in the SUV was unharmed, police said.
Early Monday morning, Grimes heard a knock on her door. Another granddaughter — Cotton’s younger sister — and a friend told her about the shooting.
Grimes said she believes someone called Cotton to come out Sunday night after she had gone to sleep. In recent months, Grimes had repeatedly asked her grandchildren not to go outside late at night, and to be careful of who they were hanging out with.
“I kept telling them something’s going to happen terrible, somebody’s going to get hurt because y’all hanging with the wrong crowd, hanging at the wrong houses,” Grimes told The News & Observer.
During a press conference on Monday, Durham Police Chief Patrice Andrews said the shooting did not appear to be random. Asked if police are investigating whether previous altercations or gang activity had led to the shooting, Andrews said investigators are “looking at everything.”
Police said that the SUV the teens were riding in was reported stolen the day before the shooting. Investigators also recovered a Kel-Tec P-11 semiautomatic pistol from the scene of the shooting, according to a police report obtained by the N&O on Thursday.
Police did not provide any more information, including whether the gun was found inside or outside the SUV.
A girl with big dreams
Grimes smiled as she thought about her granddaughter.
“She wanted to be a singer or a dancer — she wanted to be on TV,” Grimes said. “She loved music, and she was a real A, B student when she went to school. She was real energized and she spoke her mind. ... Whatever she thought was right she stood up for it.”
Cotton had lived with her since she was in elementary school. In the days since Cotton’s death, Grimes hasn’t returned to her apartment, choosing to stay with other family members instead.
Grimes said she doesn’t know who is behind Monday’s shooting or what led to it, and because of that uncertainty, and she doesn’t feel safe going back home.
There have been fewer shootings in Durham, compared to last year, but the city has seen at least 45 homicides in 2021, the most in a single year since at least 1995, according to police records.
Grimes said she believes one of the problems is that young people can access firearms too easily.
“I hope they’re able to get some of these guns off the streets,” Grimes said.
Durham County Sheriff Clarence Birkhead, who was at Thursday’s vigil along with several other sheriff’s deputies and Durham police officers, said Monday that Durham cannot accept violence taking the lives of young people “as the norm.”
Grimes had a message for police on Thursday: “Find out who did this. Solve this crime quick, and get them people off the street before they kill somebody else.”
This story was originally published December 16, 2021 at 10:16 PM.
