Low-key vigil honors slain teen

Remembrances mixed with mild recriminations at the vigil to remember Peyton Brooks Strickland, an 18-year-old man who lost his life in a tragic turn of events a year ago Saturday.

With late twilight fading on the downtown Wilmington riverfront, the friends and relatives of the talented young man gathered in a low-key, candlelight vigil on the Riverwalk deck behind Cape Fear Community College. It was there that Strickland was attending classes before his unexpected death sent shock waves through not only family and friends, but the law enforcement and legal communities of the city and state.

"Peyton would be proud of us," said an aunt, Andi Brooks, as she helped set up a remembrance table for her late nephew at the start of the vigil.

"He would be very proud of us; he would've had duct tape to fix anything," answered Strickland's grandmother, Joanne Brooks.

Nearby was a display containing a spray of white lilies, candles and two posterboards of photos of Peyton in a variety of scenes: with his family; with friends; fishing; or playing with his dog, Blaze.

Strickland was shot to death Dec. 1, 2006, by a New Hanover County sheriff's corporal who was part of a team of officers serving warrants for the theft of two video game systems.

Strickland and two of his friends were suspects in the robbery.

Strickland's dog also was killed in the incident.

A sedate but lighthearted mood settled over the vigil, which lasted more than two hours and drew 60 to 80 people who came to remember their friend and relative.

The Brookses urged arriving friends, most of them college age, to pick up candles they'd brought and light them in Strickland's memory.

"Peyton loved nothing more than being by the water," said family friend Nick Kane, 20, who came down for the vigil just as he's preparing to graduate from the University of North Carolina.

Kane, a broadcast journalism major, spoke freely about his absent friend to several reporters at the evening vigil.

"We don't avoid talking about Peyton," he said of himself and Strickland's large group of friends. Kane recalled Strickland as "very talented with his hands, an accomplished welder and technician who had built a motorcycle from scratch even before he attended classes at Cape Fear.

"We're always saying 'Peyton would do this,' or 'Peyton would like that.' We are not thinking about justice or whether justice was done. That would just make us mad. Nothing we do or say is going to bring him back. It just feels really good to say his name and talk about him with people who knew him," Kane said.

For Strickland's aunt Amy Read, of Wilmington, the past year has been "frustrating" and "really, really bad" at times.

"We've just been trying to understand what happened, and what's happened after that, and dealing with the loss," she said.

Read said she has nothing to do with any planned civil action that may be contemplated by the Strickland family over the circumstances of Peyton's death.

"This night is for celebrating who he is and what he had done with his life. This event doesn't bring closure, but comfort," she told a television interviewer. "It tells me that the year I just lived, I didn't live it alone."

Images of Strickland were in abundance at the vigil, in sheets of photographs provided by his mother and father, Don and Kathy Strickland, and cut out into individual photos by Strickland's grandmother and aunt on the way down to the vigil. Others were emblazoned on T-shirts worn by many, with the front and back caption, "1988 and forevermore," noting Strickland's year of birth.

Strickland's parents did not attend the vigil, preferring to stay at their Raleigh home. According to Read, who received a phone call from them during the vigil, the family is "doing good" and having a small cookout as a private observance.

A display at the vigil contained written thoughts and condolences to Strickland's family in Raleigh and was to be delivered to them in the next few days.

The vigil contained no formal speech or talk about Strickland, and groups of friends stood with candles alight as they talked about him.

Two of Strickland's music-minded friends, Don Epperson and Kevin Samuels, sat on the far end of a bench on the deck by the water and sang a set of mellow, slightly melancholy songs in his honor, with the assembly joining in a sing-a-long on one particular number, Wagon Wheel, by a group called Old Crow Medicine Show.

Matthew Brooks, Strickland's uncle from Winston-Salem, said of the vigil, "As soon as we heard about it, it was a no-brainer for us. I said of course we're going to go."

Paul Jefferson 755-6307

paul.jefferson@starnewsonline.com