Father-to-be, Boy Scout employee, dies when boxing match ends in gunfire

It was supposed to be a street boxing match. A challenge between friends, witnesses said.

But a man taking a licking from 17-year-old Raphael Butler-Grimmett pulled out a gun, his grandmother Cynthia Grimmett said.

He could do nothing against bullets. Raphael ran. His mother and his aunt were watching, she said. His pregnant girlfriend watched, too, and tried to run between him and the shooter.

Raphael — she called him “Ralphie” — was gunned down by the man who then fled in a car from the 6800 block of Cleveland Avenue early Saturday morning.

Patrolling police officers who heard the gunshots gave chase and the fleeing car crashed in Kansas at Interstate 35 and Seventh Street, where the driver was taken into custody.

The dying teenager that the shooter left behind, cradled in his mother’s arms, was a good student, had a job with the Boy Scouts of America helping in the program’s outreach to city school children, and was working with the Full Employment Council to find more work.

He wanted to prepare himself to be able to raise his new family, his grandmother said.

And his boss with the Scouts, LaKisha Martin, said Raphael also wanted to earn more to be able to relieve the financial burden on his grandmother, whom he lived with and who was his guardian.

“My Ralphie was going to have a baby,” Cynthia Grimmett said. “He was trying to find a way to take care of his family.”

The Full Employment Council recommended him for the Boy Scouts job, Martin said. His work in the schools was going to resume after Labor Day, and Raphael was ready to go.

“He wanted to do something with his life,” Martin said, recalling several conversations with Raphael. “He wanted to graduate. He wanted to prove to people he could accomplish something. He wanted to prove he could do good.”

Many people on Raphael’s street knew the teenager, his grandmother said.

That included Marcus Miller, who heard the gunshots Saturday morning and the sirens that came flooding after — but he didn’t give it a second thought at the time. The neighborhood is too familiar with the sound, he said.

Only when he saw Facebook and GoFundMe photos of the shooting victim did Miller realize it was the neighborhood teen who used to stop by Miller’s home occasionally for fatherly advice.

“That’s my little guy from the neighborhood,” said Miller as tears welled up in his eyes.

“He was a really good kid. Sure he had issues, just like every average urban kid has,” Miller added. “But he had promise. He just needed to be steered in the right direction.”

And that’s what Miller tried to do every time Raphael came over to talk. Miller wanted to him know there were consequences for every decision, so it was important to make good ones.

The advice was simple: Don’t live life on emotions. Think first before every decision. Street rules only exist in your mind. And TV is fiction, so don’t live a fictional life.

“I would tell him that whatever he got from me this day, he’s to use in life,” Miller said. “I wanted him to succeed.”

Pointing to a barely visible path in the yard, Miller could clearly see in his mind where Raphael would cut across when visiting his girlfriend. Miller said he jokingly told the teen that if he was going to cut across the grass, the very least he could do is cut it.

Soon after, he found Raphael out there mowing it.

Miller said he had hoped that one day he’d be sitting on his front porch and the teen — now a grown-up — would pull up to his house with a family of his own.

“I really wanted to see him do well,” Miller said.

Raphael had been a student at the Plaza Academy in Midtown until this year when he was completing his schooling online through the Kansas City Public Schools so he could seek full-time employment to support his family, Cynthia Grimmett said.

He was a great dancer, she said. “He had that charisma.”

“And he always told you ‘I love you,’” she said. “I love you grandma. I love you auntie...”

A GoFundMe page — “helping bury a loved one” — is raising money for his funeral and burial.

Family and friends are gathering Monday afternoon at the site in the 6800 block of Cleveland Avenue where he was shot, and by 6 p.m. they plan to release balloons in his memory, and in a message against violence.

“We have to stop the violence,” she said. “Put down the guns.”

This story was originally published August 26, 2018 at 9:15 PM.