NORCROSS, Ga. — Funeral services were held Saturday for the high school student who was shot at a bus stop in Lawrenceville on Nov. 2.
Timothy Barnes Jr., 16, was a sophomore at Central Gwinnett High School. His family, friends and the community gathered at Norcross First United Methodist Church Saturday for his funeral.
In attendance at Timothy's funeral service was State Rep. Donna McLeod. She offered her condolences to Timothy's mother Latoya Nicholson and the rest of his family. She said it is especially hard to hear about this tragedy because her own daughter attended Central Gwinnett High School years before Timothy.
"This is just a really horrible, horrible, occasion... to see a young person in a coffin is gut-wrenching and it's painful... that loss of life that will never be because we'll never know what he'll be anymore," she said.
McLeod added that she spoke with the woman who was organizing the service for the family. She said that the teen who shot Timothy knew him and they even lived diagonally from each other. However, she said that they had a fight, and the 17-year-old shot Timothy in the head at a bus stop in their Saddle Shoals neighborhood off of Spring Lake Road.
Nicholson said Timothy was leaving home and headed to the bus stop when two teens, who both live in the neighborhood, came up behind him. She said that's when one of them shot him.
A 17-year-old suspect was taken into custody the day of the shooting. He is now being charged with malice murder.
"I hope that other kids, our communities will take this as a warning to make sure that we're really looking at our children, we're really making a society that actually makes it good for our children to exist in," McLeod said.