Minutes earlier, Joe Williams had collapsed, sobbing, his slight frame supported by family members and friends in front of the Minneapolis duplex where he found his girlfriend and her son brutally slain last week.
But as the pastor from the church down the street led hundreds of Williams' supporters in a prayer of defiant hope for Katricia Daniels, her 10-year-old son, Robert Shepard, and their neighborhood, Williams lifted his tear-stained cheeks to the sky, set his jaw and raised a clenched fist.
"We can't do anything right now for the people that's gone," the Rev. Charles Graham said, his voice rising. "But we can make a difference for the people in this community."
Williams looked past the police tape that still draped the front porch and marched down the street in the Kingfield neighborhood.
It was a message of remembrance, mourning and angry revolt against what the gathered crowd perceived as a status quo of senseless violence that has plagued too many Twin Cities neighborhoods for too long.
Neighbors gathered to remember or to hear about Robert, a rambunctious boy who looked forward to football practice and to starting fifth grade, and his mother, who had three other children.
Their bodies, beaten and stabbed, were found by Williams in the duplex in the 3600 block of 1st Avenue S. Williams' 18-month-old daughter with Daniels was also found in the home, covered in blood but unharmed.
Two 17-year-old boys, both described as acquaintances of the victims, were arrested Friday in connection with the killings. They were booked in the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center on probable cause murder. Their identities were not released because they are juveniles.
