Black Lives Matter activist MarShawn McCarrel fatally shoots self

Damn! He lived less than two miles from where I lived for nearly 20 years. I saw this in the Dispatch but they did not give any info earlier, just that a guy had shot himself in front of the Statehouse main west entry. Damn he needed help. So many people are not getting the help they need. This is terrible. I will check around with local sources to see if anyone has anymore info.

Wasn't too long ago that someone else who was despondent immolated themselves in front of our city hall.

Such a sad and tragic waste.

 

Well the local media is either ignoring it or has a watered down version. SMH that the New York Daily News has better coverage of it than the mainstream media here. They probably think it looks 'bad for the city' or some such nonsense.

 

I heard this earlier today and it bothered me a great deal for some reason. IT is true what they say - you never know what is bothering someone. Even with the accolades and doing something meaningful for others, his demons won. I wonder what young woman or man got under his skin and rejected him? or was it drugs? or depression? Something really strong led to this... someone bright and making a difference is now gone. So sad.

 

What a tragic loss...

 

Actually our local paper last night had a much more in depth article about this. A much larger article with much more information and really pretty much praising this guy. There was a candlelight vigil of over 200 people last night. So many people who just loved this guy and all of the good things he did, how talented he was, how much he gave of himself-it just makes this even more tragic. If he only reached out to someone.

Also he has a twin brother who is now left without his twin.

 

Very sad. I know someone off here that knows this guy. May he rest in perfect peace.

 

He was doing so much for other people and gave his life for a bigger cause only to not take care of himself mentally. Sad.

 

People are out there doing brave things to help other people but need help for themselves. He probably just needed to have someone he could talk to. It's sad. May his soul rest in peace!

 

May be too long, but here is the dispatch article:

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He was always writing, even as a boy, even in church.

MarShawn M. McCarrel II was driven to record his thoughts about the world and relate his own experience in a search for common ground.

He wrote poems, rapped lyrics, hollered through bullhorns at Statehouse rallies. The methods of his delivery varied, but the calls for social justice and unity didn't waver.

That's what McCarrel's admirers talked about on Tuesday — his voice, and their shared sadness that he chose to silence it.

McCarrel, 23, of Franklin Township, fatally shot himself on the threshold of the Statehouse on Monday, a few hours after posting on Facebook: "My demons won today. I'm sorry."

State troopers, who patrol the Statehouse, said they didn't know his motivation. But for friends who had stood alongside him during protests, sometimes on the Statehouse lawn, the message was clear: Those in power are not good listeners, and not their brothers' keepers.

"The Statehouse was no accident," said Molly Shack, an organizer with the Ohio Student Association. "We've been working so hard, and yet the conditions for the people in our community and the people that he loved and cared about are still so hard. I have to imagine that that burden weighed a lot on him."

"He didn't want any mysteries," said James Hayes, another OSA organizer. "That's why he went where he went."

Family and friends, about 200 of whom gathered Tuesday night for a candlelight vigil at Dodge Park, said McCarrel's loss is profound. But they stressed that so is his legacy of grass-roots advocacy, from feeding the homeless to speaking out on behalf of the Black Lives Matter campaign. McCarrel died only three days after he was honored in California as one of 15 Radio One Hometown Champions.

"Shawn made an incredible impact and was such a light for literally thousands of people," Shack said. "The ripples around him go very far."

Expression always came naturally for McCarrel, said his mother, Leatha Wellington.

"As early as elementary school, he would be writing, writing," she said.

"He was just so creative," twin brother MarQuan McCarrel said.

Steve Shapiro is the program director for Mosaic, a high-school humanities program that draws students from across Franklin County. He taught McCarrel only one year, but Shapiro regularly asked his former student back to speak. He connected naturally with kids from all walks of life, Shapiro said.

"In 27 years, I've never had a student who I was more proud of than MarShawn," Shapiro said. "He was able to capture, in rhyme, really profound truths. He had a brilliance, he had an insight that was just so beyond his years.

"I saw him as a shining star in the future of civil rights," Shapiro said.

McCarrel was 19 and working at an East Side recreation center when he and Hayes became friends.

"MarShawn gave me some great gifts," Hayes said. "He taught me how to fight death with life."

McCarrel always said, "You have to build community to move community," Shack said. "He would want us all to continue to build community and carry that philosophy with us."

MarQuan McCarrel said his twin was never interested in using his talents to enrich himself. Wellington said her son's activism might have taken more of an emotional toll on him than anyone realized.

"He had so much to do," his mother said. "He forgot to take time for himself."

tdecker@dispatch.com

@Theodore_Decker

 

Very tragic. One of the things we don't talk about as black people is mental health and suicide. There was a recent post concerning "Black people don't." One of those popular myths is black people don't commit suicide. Actually black males have shockingly high suicide rate. It's a shame this young man who was trying to help others wasn't able to get the help her needed.