Tire Nichols’ skateboard crew reunited to mourn their friends at his memorial

Around them, the skate park was quickly filled with people. Eventually, more than 100 will appear in Nichols’ memorial, where the 29-year-old Nichols was killed by police in Memphis, where he moved in 2020. Five police officers Facing murder. One-sixth was suspended. They are a unit Disbanded. Videos of brutal assaults have spread widely, but most of Nichols’ seniors say they are trying to avoid it. Nichols joins a long list of label names known for police violence, but for friends who have known him for a long time, his death is not the cry of a rally, but the pain of acute and intimacy.

“Sometimes, when I think of him, it hurts so much that I just try to get it to sleep,” Williams said.

“I wish I could see him more,” Danfoss said.

“It’s sometimes hard to stay in touch as you get older,” said Alex Wilson, whose candles illuminate the breeze under a cup-packed hand.

Away from the news cameras and crowds gathered in the middle of the park, crew members gathered behind a large ramp in the distance, circled the candles tightly along its base. Their arms were draped on each other, they squeezed together, huddled together in the twinkling warmth, memories rushed back with nostalgic floods.

“This place is the best man,” Ryan Wilson stared at the ramp he learned to skate for the first time.

“Anyone who shows up here is part of the family,” Danfoss said.

Danforth and Alex Wilson were the crew’s first crew to enter this subdivision of Natomas, a sprawling and flat suburb that spans the suburbs of Sacramento from the airport to downtown. When their families arrived in the early 2000s, most communities, including Regent Park, were still under construction, as part of the housing boom, spanning vacant grasslands north of the city.

Located at the intersection of Interstate 5 and Interstate 80, the two major arteries in Northern California, Natomas easily reaches downtown at an affordable price that induces first-time home buyers around the area and of various class backgrounds and races.

As more and more homes rise, more and more young families move in to fill them. Danforth and Alex Wilson arrived about five months ago, Tire Nichols and his father arrived. Together, these three adolescence explore their unfinished community. Sometimes, they travel through the wooden frame that is about to become a house, trying to shoot with an airsoft. Most days they met at Regent Park, when the Regent Park was simply surrounded by dirt in a building area, with bells covered with tarpaulins every night. Under the tarpaulin, the skateboard park is taking shape. Danforth, Alex Wilson and Nichols are all new skateboarders who take off their tarps after construction workers leave and test their movements on freshly installed ramps and tracks.