Family remembers 14-year-old killed in Milwaukee street shooting

Nearly 24 hours after her son, Alijah Golden-Richmond, was shot and killed, Princella Golden is surrounded by family and friends, trying to make sense. “Man, he was a house kid. He was a house kid. My kids were never really outside, they couldn't just go out like that. But when he did, it was probably to the park and back home,” Golden said Friday at a vigil for his family at the corner of 40th and Vliet, where he died. That's about a block and a half from where he was shot Thursday. Evidence markers from the Milwaukee Police Department indicated the locations of the shell casings scattered along 39th Street Thursday afternoon. Several of them were near a child's toy. “I heard a gunshot; I was in my kitchen,” said a neighbor named Lisa, who did not want us to use her last name. “And then I heard what sounded like more gunshots. It went something like pop, pop, pop, pop. And I was scared because my kids are in the house.” Lisa knows all too well the dangers and pain the boy's family is feeling. “I lost a son who was the victim of a homicide, so it was pretty scary. I was nervous the rest of the day,” Lisa said. Her son was 16 when he died, not much older than Alijah Golden-Richmond. Alijah is the 17th child killed in a gun homicide in Milwaukee this year. “It's devastating. It's got to stop. When is it going to stop? It's happening too much,” Lisa said. “Too many kids have these guns. I don't know, do they know that they're really killing people, that it's not a game? And it just happens way too often. It's got to stop.” Milwaukee police said they are looking for “an unknown suspect” and are continuing to investigate. They did not say whether they know of a motive. Family and friends at the vigil said Alijah was with several friends at the time of the shooting, but offered no explanation for what led up to it.