The mother of a man who was shot and killed by an armed citizen said she doesn't hate her son's killer.
“I'm not angry or mad at him,” Kim Thomas told The World-Herald on Wednesday night. “I've already forgiven that man. What Marquail did wasn't right.”
Marquail Thomas, 18, wearing a ski mask and armed with a sawed-off shotgun, went into the Walgreens in Benson on Monday night with another man and tried to rob the store, Omaha police said.
Instead, Thomas was shot by a customer, Harry J. McCullough III. McCullough will not be charged in the slaying, authorities have said.
“I feel bad it had to happen like this,” Kim Thomas said of her son's death. “I feel bad for (McCullough). He has to live with this for the rest of his life.”
Thomas, 34, said the Marquail who walked into the Walgreens was someone she hardly knew anymore.
She and her son had grown apart over the past several months. He wasn't sleeping at home anymore and rarely spoke to her.
They had always been close. Thomas, a mother of three suffering from lupus and fibromyalgia, juggled two jobs at times to make ends meet.
Thomas knew something was wrong a few months ago when Marquail stopped videotaping Sunday services at their church, Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church. That's something he did faithfully on Sundays for years.
“His whole demeanor changed,” she said. “He started hanging out with people I didn't know and became so distant.”
A year ago today, Marquail and two others were shot when gunmen opened fire on a crowd at a park near 21st and Evans Streets.
Thomas said she didn't even know Angelo Douglas, the 17-year-old who entered the Walgreens with her son and was later arrested.
In March, Marquail stopped going to school. He attended Burke High from 2006 to 2009, but he never progressed past ninth grade. He last attended North High.
Lindsey Stover, a counselor at Burke who had been Marquail's eighth grade English teacher at Beveridge Middle School, kept in touch with him over the years and served as a mentor.
“This isn't the kid I knew,” she said. “We lost him somewhere along the line. He just kind of slipped away.”
That wasn't supposed to happen to Kim Thomas' son, the boy who idolized Michael Jordan, had a passion for music and received awards for his artwork.
Rita Gresham, a friend of the family, remembered Marquail as a courteous young man.
“It was always yes, ma'am, no, ma'am,” Gresham said. “He was a smart kid with a lot of potential that just got caught up in the wrong crowd.”
Thomas said her son told her he felt depressed, despite his popularity. He struggled in school because he felt like an outsider.
“My son was hurting,” she said. “He told me he felt like it was hard living in this world as a young black man.”
Services were pending at Roeder Mortuary near 50th Street and Ames Avenue.
Contact the writer:
444-1336, leia.mendoza@owh.com
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