MarShawn McCarrel, a Black Lives Matter activist, killed himself outside the front doors of Ohio's statehouse on Monday evening, reported the
Columbus Dispatch.
McCarrel, 23, had just been honored by Radio One as a "Hometown Champion" at the NAACP Image Awards in Los Angeles on Friday for community activism work, said the
Huffington Post.
On Monday afternoon, though, McCarrel wrote on his
Facebook page, "My demons won today. I'm sorry."
Police responded to a shooting at the state capitol at 6 p.m. Monday and McCarrel was pronounced dead at the scene, said the Dispatch. He lived in neighboring Franklin Township.
About 200 people gathered at a Columbus park Tuesday for a vigil to mourn McCarrel's death.
WBNS-TV said he had been involved in local Black Lives Matters protests and organizing citizen action for justice reform through a group called the Ohio Student Association.
Molly Shack, an Ohio Student Association organizer, told the Dispatch that McCarrel's going to the statehouse was no accident.
"We've been working so hard, and yet the conditions for the people in our community and the people that he loved and cared about are still so hard," said Shack. "I have to imagine that that burden weighed a lot on him."
WBNS-TV said McCarrel and his twin brother MarQuan McCarrel fed hungry people through a project they created at 19, called "Feed the Streets."
"He just wanted to make a difference," Leatha Wellington, McCarrel's mother told the television station. "He just wanted to make a change. I was super-duper proud of my son."
Wellington and MarQuan McCarrel said they were both unaware that MarShawn's struggles with what appeared to be depression.
"Depression is just one of those things," said MarQuan McCarrel. "It can fly under the radar. It can be covered with a smile. It can be covered with a laugh. It can be covered with a joke."
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