'He shined bright': Killed by a bullet, local teen was just trying to be 'a regular kid'

Crime and adolescence in the capital city: Tallahassee teens find their voice after tragic day

Karl Etters
Tallahassee Democrat
Derreecia Williams shows off her shirt honoring Cobi Mathis Thursday, March 14, 2019. Mathis, 17, was shot and killed in broad daylight in the parking lot of an Old Bainbridge Road daycare Monday, Feb. 25, 2019.

Cobi Mathis was killed on a Monday afternoon.

Normally, there would be an hour of classes left in the school day and a full week of education ahead. Instead, at about 12:50 p.m. on Feb. 26 shots rang out, cutting short another young man's life in a hail of bullets in broad daylight in the parking lot of a daycare.

Tallahassee Police say that was due to decisions made by the 17-year-old and his two friends, who are being charged with felony murder, to elicit a drug deal with plans to commit a robbery instead.  

Mathis and his two friends, Jordan K. Smith and Xaiver Coachman, all fled as the person they’d agreed to meet in the parking lot of Monterey Apartments on Old Bainbridge Road began firing.

Coachman, 19, and Smith, 18, took off in a Honda sedan now pockmarked with bullet holes.

Mathis was hit. He jumped a wooden fence and ran up the back walkway of the Franklin Academy, a daycare looking to establish roots in the neighborhood after decades on the city's south side on Tuskegee Street.

He banged on the door for help. Staff, concerned about the dozen or so kids inside, didn’t open it. Mathis soon died of gunshot wounds in the parking lot.

Mathis’ killer, presumably the drug dealer he intended to rob, has remained elusive. No suspects have been named and there have been no additional arrests.

As adults in Tallahassee yet again circle around the question of why young people are becoming more involved in gun violence, a small group of teens, some who knew the former Godby High School student, weighed in with their thoughts on crime and adolescence in the capital city.

‘I’ve got to watch who I’m around’

What makes a teen turn from aspiring high school graduate and student athlete to a life that involves drugs, guns and crime?

Mathis’ high school peers say it’s a mix of wanting to fit in, a generational voice they feel is muffled and the allure of fast money and notoriety.

Daniel Anderson, 18, is one of the newest members of the city's TEMPO program aimed at getting youth who are out of work and unemployed connected with resources. Anderson speaks with the program's director Kimbal Thomas.

More:'Too much tragedy': Teachers, friends at Godby mourn Cobi Mathis day after shooting

For Daniel Anderson, an 18-year-old cousin of Mathis, it’s easy to see why people his age find themselves caught up in the criminal world. Teens think it's cool seeing people they look up to with money, women and using drugs. “My homeboy is robbing somebody and got some extra money; now I want to rob somebody and get some extra money. My homeboy is ganging; now I want to gang,” he said on a rainy Friday afternoon in March.

“They’ll think it’s cool and they want to do that. So if I see somebody I kind of look up to and I kind of know him and he’s smoking, he’s got girls .... I want to go see what he’s talking about, I want to see what he’s doing.”

Anderson knows people his age who run in gangs and are involved in crime. They all have charges or are in jail right now, he said. His own run-ins with Leon County Schools officials for drug violations got him expelled from Nims Middle School.

Anderson is one of more than 440 Tallahassee teens and young adults who have enrolled in the city’s TEMPO (Tallahassee Engaged in Meaningful Productivity for Opportunity) program. It is aimed at providing educational and workforce resources to young adults both out of school and out of work.

It's too easy to get caught up in sketchy situations with friends. But it's also easy to avoid them.  

“I just feel like I can’t involve myself in that. It happened and that’s my cousin but at the end of the day that ain’t me,” he said. “I’ve got to watch who I’m around because you never know what somebody could have done."

Anderson, who now attends Adult & Community Education classes, said the allure of what peers are doing comes when there is no one to show teens a different way.

“Nobody has told them that your self-help will be your best help. There isn’t anybody talking to them or doing anything with them,” he said. “There is help out here but you’ve got to want to help yourself first.”

'How much more is it going to take?'

Teens have become accustomed to violence, said Raqiya Whitley, a 17-year-old senior at Rickards High School.

She and Mathis met while they were in elementary school. Even though she hadn’t seen him in several years, they had mutual friends. 

“I feel like it made a huge effect, especially on kids my age and at my school, because it was somebody we knew,” Whitley said. “Even if we didn’t know him it was still in our city and we crossed paths. I think the whole thing could have been prevented.”

Raqiya Whitley, 17, a senior at Rickards High School went to elementary school with Cobi Mathis, also 17, who was shot and killed in broad daylight in the parking lot of an Old Bainbridge Road daycare Monday, Feb. 25, 2019.

Nobody wants to be an outcast. So they do things to fit in, sometimes to their own detriment.

“When I hear these things and then I see the type of people they run with then I think OK maybe they’re trying to fit in, which is kind of what it’s about at this age,” Whitley said. “Fitting in. Getting in with the crowd. Nobody really wants to be an outcast.”

Whitley is in the Community Connection program at the Palmer Monroe Teen Center. The 12-week program serves kids between 13 and 17 who have been referred through the legal system.

Whitley was enrolled in the program about a year ago, after she was arrested for fighting and entered into a diversion program. Now she shows up on Tuesdays and Thursday after school and ROTC to volunteer at the Jackson Bluff Road center.

The program has helped her to find her voice rather than use violence to be understood.

“It’s OK to talk to people. You don’t always have to prove yourself,” she said. 

Raqiya Whitley, 17, a senior at Rickards High School went to elementary school with Cobi Mathis, also 17, who was shot and killed in broad daylight in the parking lot of an Old Bainbridge Road daycare Monday, Feb. 25, 2019.

“You can relook at things a different way and realize maybe that’s not always the answer. I realized there are more ways to deal with things.”

Whitley said she wasn’t surprised to learn that another teen was killed in Tallahassee. But she is stunned the voice of teens is still not part of the conversation about how to combat gun violence among juveniles.

“It’s always the adults talking for us. If kids had a voice, in any situation big or small, it would make a difference," she said. "How much more is it going to take before someone does something or speaks up?"

'It should be like a wake-up call'

Social media is how news of Mathis’ shooting spread. It’s how Antasia Graham, a 16-year-old at Lincoln High School, found out. They had friends in common but didn’t know each other.

“It touched me even though I didn’t know him personally. That was somebody around my age. That’s why it really hit me,” Graham said. “It bothers me because we’re young and still have a whole life ahead of us. Your life is just gone like that.”

Family and friends of a 17-year-old killed in an Old Bainbridge Road daycare's parking lot mourn in the yard of a neighboring church.

Graham, who was arrested for fighting, is enrolled in a non-violent communication course at The Palmer Monroe Center. She said some kids have situations at home that makes them feel they have to grow up fast, or they want the flashy cars or handfuls of cash they seen online.

"They get into the wrong crowds, get out here in the streets and sometimes it turns out like that," she said. "It should be like a wake-up call to some kids who are still out here in the world doing that type of stuff.”

Tavaris King, a friend and former Amateur Athletic Union basketball team member of Mathis’, has had time to reflect since his friend was killed. The two hung out and went to a party the Saturday before the shooting. He went to the scene where his friend was killed. He attended the somber funeral.

King doesn't believe what Smith and Coachman told investigators about the planned robbery nor did he see signs of violence in his friend since middle school.

Tallahassee Police investigators canvass the scene where a 17-year-old was gunned down in the parking lot of an Old Bainbridge Road daycare Monday.

“Just being with him that weekend, we were doing nothing. No violent stuff. To hear that just a couple days later, that’s crazy,” King said.

He said he knows kids who are involved in crime, but not among his friends. Mathis’ death has made the Godby High basketball player work that much harder toward his own future.

“At our age it’s happening, but the people I hang around with there’s nothing like that. We all want to see each other make it,” he said. “It just motivates me to keep doing what I’m doing because I know he’s looking down smiling.”

'You can do stuff differently'

Derreecia Williams knew Mathis well. They were close, spending time on the road together because her mother is a coach of his former travel basketball team.

“I would call him a family member. A brother,” said Williams, sitting at a picnic table at Jack McLean Park. It was after school and a few teens milled about the park playing basketball or walking home. Williams wore a shirt with Mathis' photo on it. 

Derreecia Williams, 16, proudly shows off a "long live Cobi" shirt in honor of Cobi Mathis, 17, who was shot and killed in broad daylight in the parking lot of an Old Bainbridge Road daycare Monday, Feb. 25, 2019.

Burying him was tough. Not knowing why he was killed is tougher.

“It made me feel really sad and angry because I still don’t know what really happened,” she said. “But to know that somebody like him, as close as we were, got put down on the ground and we had to bury him, it makes me really upset and frustrated. That’s a lot to take in.”

Williams knew Mathis had run-ins with the law, but robberies weren’t something she knew him to be involved in, despite what investigators say.

Williams has had a taste of trouble herself. The 16-year-old attends Second Chance at Ghazvini Learning Center after she was caught with a TASER she says she had for self-protection.

A photo of Cobi Mathis on Derreecia Williams' shirt Thursday, March 15, 2019. Mathis, 17, was shot and killed in broad daylight in the parking lot of an Old Bainbridge Road daycare Monday, Feb. 25, 2019.

Mathis' death should show other teens that there are other options besides violence.

“Him passing away, it shows a lot of people that this is not where you want to be,” she said.

“This could be you. So you need to change around what you’re doing and stay out of the streets. You can do stuff differently.”

Contact Karl Etters at ketters@tallahassee.com or @KarlEtters on Twitter.