Cedric Jones

By Christopher D. Kirkpatrick
ckirkpatrick@charlotteobserver.com

Myers Park senior Cedric Jones smiled Tuesday as he hugged assistant principal Phylis Hampson and pinched her arm.

The moment was a reminder of the strides Jones had made, socially and academically, since entering Myers Park as a ninth-grader lagging behind other students.

By the next morning, the 18-year-old was dead of gunshots fired by a neighborhood friend during an argument that escalated out of control, police and neighbors say.

“He was working so hard to prepare himself for college,” said Myers Park principal Tom Spivey.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police charged Orlando Rogers, 19, with shooting Jones near the victim's home in Charlotte's Belmont neighborhood.

A neighbor said the argument was over a girl, according to the WCNC-TV, the Observer's news partner. But police haven't released a motive.

The neighborhood is one of Charlotte's more dangerous, according to local government statistics. The violent crime rate is nearly four times that of Charlotte as a whole, with a juvenile arrest rate nearly twice as high, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Neighborhood Quality of Life Index.

But Jones stood out to his neighbors as someone who stepped around the drug and crime issues that plague the neighborhood. He would eventually go to college, his neighbors and teachers had thought.

Mary Berryhill, who has lived next door to the Jones family for 10 years, said Jones and her son had been friends since elementary school.

“He was very intelligent. He was one of those high-IQ types,” she said of Jones. “The two earned honest money together by cutting grass and raking leaves in the neighborhood. He was about doing the right things in life.”

The shooting suspect was also a friend – part of an extended “old school” neighborhood where families help raise each other's children, Berryhill said. “Everybody is shaken. They all pretty much played together growing up.”

Jones attended McClintock Middle School. An Observer story from 2004 lists a Cedric Jones as McClintock's honoree in the Teen Role Model of the Year competition.

In high school, he would call friends who skipped school to bless them out and encourage them to return, Myers Park teacher Glenda McKinnon remembered.

She said Wednesday that one student she knows credits Jones with keeping him from dropping out.

Jones was working extra hours to take enough classes to become eligible to attend a four-year college. He needed some higher-level math and some other requirements, his teachers said.

He signed up to take classes at Hawthorne High, an alternative school for expectant mothers and older students trying to finish at odd hours. He was about to sign up for more classes given through the school online.

Said principal Spivey: “Cedric was true success story with a bright future.”

Staff researcher Marion Paynter and writer Cleve R. Wootson Jr. contributed.