Dozens of people gathered to spend their Saturday honoring Darius Lee, the college basketball player who was fatally shot in Harlem last year.
Lee’s basketball coaches and closest friends took part in a clinic for kids, which was organized by a group called the
DLee23 Foundation.
Lee was fatally shot on Father’s Day in 2022 while at a barbecue party in a park along the Harlem River Parkway. Nine people were shot during the incident, including Lee. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Lee was a star player at St. Raymond's High School in the Bronx and excelled after moving on to Houston Baptist University. He was set to graduate that December.
Family and friends say Lee was always about giving back to the community and teaching kids his favorite sport.
"He was the nicest person I ever met. There was never a day he wasn't smiling,” said Lee’s friend Jameek Brown.
"Darius to me was someone who the kids here and the block could actually rely on,” said family friend Marcus Wilson.
"Darius would’ve loved this. This is the type of thing that he liked to when he was growing up,” said Lee’s mother, Taren Weaver Smith.