Angie and Mike's Blog

Angie and I received some very sad news today. Brandi, a former BBBS colleague from Topeka, emailed to say that former Little Brother Farrell Sanders, on the left in the photo, had been killed by gunfire in Topeka's Highland Park neighborhood in the early hours of Thursday morning. You can read the story here. (To log in, use the user/password combo of photo/photo.) The investigation is on-going and it's unclear at this moment whether his killing is connected to a previous shooting in the same neighborhood. He was 17.

I met Farrell in 2004 at a BBBS picnic. He was hanging out with his cousin, on the right in the photo above. At 13, he'd been waiting for a Big Brother for nearly two years and desperately wanted someone who'd play football with him. A couple of months following this picnic, the CJ did a story about BBBS and used this picture. Shortly after, Angie says, Farrell was matched to a Big Brother. We're unsure whether the match was still active.

It was very hard for both of us to focus at work today. While it's true we don't know what direction his life took in the past four years, we'll choose to remember him as the friendly, polite and outgoing kid that he was. Most of all, we'll remember him as he is in that photo - happy, and full of promise.

Labels: BBBS