Terrance Kelly only had a little more time to see family and friends. In two days, he was flying to the University of Oregon for his first summer practices with the football team.
Everyone wanted to see TK. By the time the Richmond athletic prodigy graduated from De La Salle High School in spring 2004, he was famous the city over. De La Salle, the Concord private school with the nation’s most famous football program, had won 151 games in a row — a streak never before seen anywhere in the United States. In their final game of the season, Kelly scored three touchdowns, securing the national championship yet again for the Spartans.
No one was surprised when Kelly received big-name scholarship offers, and he’d opted to commit to Oregon, a short flight away from home. On the evening of Aug. 12, 2004, he played a little pickup basketball and then drove to Seventh and Nevin in Richmond to pick up his friend Brandon Young. At 10:40 p.m., Kelly called Young to tell him he was idling outside in his dad’s white Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Kelly was still in the car when someone holding a .22-caliber Marlin rifle approached. The shooter fired four times, striking Kelly in the head and chest.
When Young came outside, he saw Kelly’s car crashed into the parked vehicle in front of it. Kelly was slumped out of the Oldsmobile, one foot still in the car. The 19-year-old was dead.
“He was almost out of here,” Landrin Kelly, Terrance’s father, sobbed as he spoke to the media two days later. “His plane ticket for college was on his dresser.”
“We wanted to move to a better place, safer than downtown Richmond,” he added. “I tried all my life to protect my son from all that. I thought he was safe.”
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It’s been 18 years since Kelly died, and the tragedy has proliferated and persisted over time. It’s been part of a movie starring Stephan James as Kelly, Jim Caviezel and Laura Dern. It was recently retold in an ID true crime show. And in each retelling, the tragedy only seems to grow.
Kelly was raised on Florida Avenue in Richmond’s Iron Triangle, and tragedy and gun violence were commonplace. One witness in Kelly’s murder trial told a grand jury that when people were shot, she’d go to see who it was. If she didn’t know the person, life went on as usual.
“Many people believe the life of a teenager to be carefree, but that is not true in the city I live in,” Kelly wrote in the personal essay for his University of Oregon application.
“They either drop out, go to jail or get killed,” he continued. “I’m determined not to end up like so many of my peers.”
Life was very different 30 minutes away in Concord, where Kelly attended De La Salle High School. Teammates said he got along with everyone, even when it was hard to relate with kids who had very different backgrounds than him.
As word spread among teammates that Kelly had been killed, so too came the shock. Coaches, friends and families all agreed that TK was not the sort to be involved in violent feuds or gang-related conflicts. Richmond police agreed. Kelly seemed universally beloved. They wondered if this was a case of mistaken identity.
The killer left behind two huge clues: a cast-off hat and the murder weapon. There were also witnesses: a group of teenagers hanging out on the corner when the shooting occurred. One of those teens was 15-year-old Darren Pratcher, an acquaintance of Kelly’s. A few people told police there appeared to be a small beef between Pratcher and Kelly, although it was decidedly one-sided. Young testified in court that Kelly’s car had once been egged; Kelly reportedly had said he thought Pratcher was behind it.
“TK didn’t look at it like that … he didn’t have a trip off of it,” Young said. “He looked past him, because he just knew like he was better than him, he just knew he had something going for himself.”
The most common refrain was jealousy: Kelly, the gridiron star, was getting out of Richmond, and Pratcher couldn’t stand it.
When police arrested the 15-year-old, more pieces came together. A teen friend admitted to giving the rifle to Pratcher. When pressed in court why he would give a rifle to a 15-year-old, the friend shrugged. “I am going to wipe my fingerprints off it, so (if) you take it out and go kill a person … my fingerprints ain’t on it,” he told a grand jury. “I ain’t got nothing to do with it. That is just how I was raised.”
In his trial, Pratcher’s lawyers didn’t try to argue the teen wasn’t the shooter. Instead, they argued Pratcher was in fear of his life due to threats from another individual, and he’d been carrying a gun to protect himself. “We are not contesting that Darren pulled that trigger four times,” one lawyer told the jury. “Darren did not know that Terrance Kelly was in that car.”
“This killing was not in self-defense,” a lawyer for the prosecution argued in response. “It was a cold-blooded ambush on a person he didn’t like.”
The jury agreed. Pratcher was found guilty, and a judge sentenced the minor to 50 years to life. Had Pratcher only fired one shot, the judge said at sentencing, then perhaps self-defense would have been more plausible. “But shots 2, 3 and 4,” the judge said, “I don’t know how you can explain that away.”
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Kelly’s funeral was attended by more than 3,500 mourners. Among them were his teammates; as they piled onto the school bus, they realized it was their first team activity of the 2004 season. A few weeks later, De La Salle’s win streak ended. It didn’t seem to trouble them much, though.
“It puts this loss into perspective,” center Scott Hugo said. “In the grand scheme of things, (losing the game) is not that huge of an event.”
In 2008, Brandon Young, then 19, was bowling at Pinole Lanes when a shooter entered the busy venue. Young was gunned down in front of about 100 witnesses. His murder remains unsolved.
Five years ago, Terrance’s father Landrin Kelly was attacked in an altercation in Vallejo. During the fight, he was knocked to the ground. He died two days later from his injuries. Since Terrance’s death, Landrin Kelly had been working to help at-risk kids in his community. He named his organization the Terrance Kelly Youth Foundation.
“Landrin was a pillar in this community,” Landrin’s cousin Johnnie Dempsey told KGO. “You know, he was out there doing the work. This is the one thing that kept him alive, keeping his son alive and his name out there and more importantly to save kids.”