‘We are all so heartbroken’: Vigil set for 19-year-old killed in uptown Charlotte

Kaleb Hagins brought smiles to his teachers.

“He was always so kind, respectful, and quietly driven,” a counselor at J.L. Mann High School in Greenville, South Carolina, wrote to his aunt, Karen Gardner of Charlotte.

Gardner forwarded the message to The Charlotte Observer on Saturday and invited the community to a candlelight service in her nephew’s memory.

The vigil is set for 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 2, at Camp Greene Park, 1221 Alleghany St. in Charlotte.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officers found Hagins dead in the 300 block of East Trade Street, near the Charlotte Transportation Center, just before 9 p.m. June 24, the Observer previously reported. He was 19.

Hagins and an 18-year-old man were in a car that had been shot into multiple times around the 1000 block of Margaret Brown Street, near Sycamore Street, according to a police report.

Hagins died as a result of the shooting, police said. The condition of the 18-year-old was unknown Saturday.

One of the victims managed to drive the car to East Trade after the shooting, WSOC reported.

The CityLYNX Gold Line stopped operating and the Transit Center was temporarily closed due to all of the police activity, according to the station.

Police haven’t named possible suspects or detailed a motive.

Funeral services for Hagins were held Saturday afternoon at New Vision Ministries in Charlotte.

Hagins lived in Charlotte until 2018, when he moved to New York to be with his dad, Karen Gardner said. He moved to Greenville in 2019 to be with his brother, she said.

“He was truly one of my favorite students, and I’d been so looking forward to cheering for him when he graduated at the end of this school year,” the counselor wrote to Gardner. “We all are so heartbroken to learn of his passing.”

A Go Fund Me site is raising money to build a memorial.