On Route 1 North, a few feet before the entrance to The Cardinal Gibbons School, red Solo cups stuffed into the openings of a metal gate spell out the words “R.I.P. Justin Fisher, # 42.”
Forty-two was the number former student Justin Fisher ? the 18-year-old Salisbury University freshman gunned down by Anne Arundel County police early Sunday morning ? wore as captain of the Cardinal Gibbons football team.
About 800 people drove past that gate Friday morning and packed the auditorium for Fisher?s funeral mass.
The teenager, remembered as a “trendsetter,” a “class clown” and an honor roll student, was shot early Sunday morning after he charged at four police officers with a pair of nine-inch scissors.
Fisher, who had a history of “psychotic episodes” was reportedly making threats to kill himself and harm his girlfriend.
Friday morning at Cardinal Gibbons, the flag flew at half-staff below gray sky. Students, family, friends and teammates gathered.
“He was a big teddy bear,” said Josh Skene, 16, a Cardinal Gibbons student. “He was always walking down the hallway, singing.”
Mourners described the mass, closed to media, as “emotional.” They also raised questions about how the face-off between Fisher and the police ended fatally.
“You want to believe that the police are right, but when they go and gun down an 18-year-old boy with a pair of scissors in his hands, it really makes you doubt … what?s going on in our world,” said 18-year-old Sam Walton, president of Fisher?s class at Cardinal Gibbons.
“I have never seen anyone on the field, in the classroom or just in life, lead by example the way Justin Fisher did. Justin had so many different things lined up in the future.”
Greg Lewis, 27, of Millersville, wondered why police couldn?t shoot Fisher in the leg or use other non-lethal force to disarm him.
Anne Arundel County police have said officers are trained to shoot for “center mass” when they feel their lives are in danger, and that it would have been impractical to try to aim for the limb of someone who has running at them.
