The skatepark around them quickly filled up with people. Eventually, more than 100 people turned up at a memorial to Nicholls, 29, who was murdered by police officers in Memphis, where she moved to in 2020. accused of murderThe sixth was interrupted.belonged to the unit DisbandedThe video of the brutal beating went viral, but most of Nichols’ old crew tried to avoid it. But to friends who have known him for a long time, his death is not a rallying cry, but a sharp, intimate pain.
“One day, when I think about him, it hurts so much that I just try to sleep,” Williams said.
“I wish I had seen more of him,” said Danforth.
“As you get older, it can be harder to stay in touch,” said Alex Wilson, lighting candles under his cupped hands to block the breeze.
Away from the news cameras and crowds gathering in the center of the park, the crew gathered behind a large ramp at the far end and placed candles in a narrow circle along its base. Arms in each other’s arms, snuggled in the flickering warmth, memories came flooding back with a flood of nostalgia.
“This was the best,” Ryan Wilson said, looking out at the ramp where he first learned to skate.
“Everyone who showed up here was part of the family,” said Danforth.
Danforth and Alex Wilson were the first crew members to move from the airport to this block that straddles the city center in Natomas, a large, flat suburb of Sacramento. When their family arrived in his early 2000s, most of the neighborhood, including Regency Park, was still under construction, part of a housing boom sweeping through the grasslands of open land north of the city.
Conveniently located at the intersection of Interstate 5 and Interstate 80, two of Northern California’s major arteries, Natomas offers affordable and easy access to downtown, making it a popular destination for the area and a wide range of classes and families. First-time homebuyers gathered from ethnic backgrounds.
As the number of homes increased, many young families moved in. Tire Nichols and his father arrived about five months after Danforth and Alex Wilson. Three preteens explored an unfinished neighborhood together. One day they were about to shoot each other with airsoft guns and soon crossed the crate of the house. Most days they would meet at Regency Park. At the time, it was little more than a field of dirt surrounding a construction zone that workers covered with tarpaulins when they left work each night. There was a skate park under the tarp. Danforth, Alex Wilson, and Nichols were all novice skateboarders, stripping the tarps and testing their moves on newly installed ramps and rails after the construction crew had left.
