Kim Daniel had known Kyle Faulkner since he was 12 years old. Truth be told, she didn’t much like him at first. Kyle and his buddies would shoot hoops in the parking lot in Preservation Square where Daniel lives, sometimes with a ball, sometimes with rocks. Youngsters in the complex would move the portable hoop around the lot, but they often stationed it near Daniel’s parking space. At night when the kids went inside, Daniel would move the hoop somewhere else.
One afternoon, Daniel saw that Kyle and his friends had returned, moving the hoop within a few feet of her vehicle and started in as they had before. She asked them to stop. But then instead of shooting baskets, Kyle and his friends took the rocks anchoring the hoop “and threw them at the back of my vehicle and busted out the rear taillight,” Daniel recalled. “And I had only had my car for about four weeks at the time.”
That was three summers ago. This year, on Sunday, July 11, Kyle, age 15, became the victim of a broad-daylight drive-by shooting about 200 yards from Kim’s second-story apartment.
“I heard an argument, gunfire, and when I went to look out my window I saw a car back up and drive out of the area,” Daniel recalled.
“There were some girls down that way, and they started screaming, and people started running. Later, a neighbor came by and said, ‘It’s that little dude who was always messing with your vehicle.’ And, I was like, ‘Oh my god.’”
When police arrived, they found Kyle’s body riddled with bullets.
Shootings and mayhem have long been a part of Kim Daniel’s life in Preservation Square, a neighborhood a mile northwest of downtown. I have been staying in touch with her for 16 months now as part of Before Ferguson Beyond Ferguson’s 63106 Project.
