His dreads hung past his blocky shoulders as the Black and Mild cigar touched his lips during the brief pauses in and out of his monologue. I thought he was much older than he really was but his physique and dialect made him seem older. The former Liberty University tailback was in the prime of his life and I had the privilege to know him as a friend for a short span of the last three months of his young life. Shay’s voice was very deep and I remember always walking into his conversations not knowing or really being able to relate. I was ignorant about the trials and tribulations that African Americans go through in the USA and I believe my lack of knowledge partially is because I’m a native of Maine where it is very sheltered compared to Virginia. I wasn’t use to Shay’s dialect but he was very kind towards me and I could see that he had good intentions.
After a few visits in the designated smoking area at Blue Ridge Community College we started to have good conversations within small increments because it was typically in between classes. I was twenty at the time and I placed Shay as being in his mid-twenties because of his physique and verbal presence. It was surprising to me to learn that Shay Nicholson was only nineteen. I’ve heard different versions of what happened November 9, 2008. That early morning, three members of the despicable gang the Crypts entered a party that Reginald Shay Nicholson was at with two friends, a male and a female. Apparently these members of such a ruthless gang started to terrorize the party through threatening people with gang symbols and ill language.
Shay was a fighter and at this point in his life, he had defeated many odds while using his athleticism and charisma. Calling the confrontation “a brief fight” is most certainly an understatement. Nicholson told the thugs that they were being disrespectful and that they needed to stop. They responded by trying to jump Nicholson. The gang members were upset with the outcome of the brawl and as Shay walked out with his friends; his male friend was jumped from behind while stepping out the door frame of the townhouse apartment. Shay and his female friend were walking down the gravel parking lot at Hunter’s Ridge thinking their friend was behind them but it was eighteen year old Zachary Turner of Charlottesville with a loaded semi-automatic pistol. The bullets were shot off at a high angle to the extent that a round grazed Nicholson’s friend’s scalp. Tragically, Shay wasn’t as fortunate as she was and a bullet entered from the back of his head and remained in lodged inside his sinus cavity. For almost two weeks Reginald Shay Nicholson held on and during this time period his parents quit their jobs to be with their son in his last moments of life.
I was almost a stranger to Shay but his murder impacted my life as it did a vast majority of Shenandoah Valley. Today, I learned that a close friend of Shay’s and mine almost had his life taken away at gunpoint in broad daylight within that very same parking lot, yesterday. It’s almost been three years since Nicholson's tragic murder but there hasn’t been a day where I haven’t thought of his story. It’s sad to fathom that such terrible atrocities are happening in the very spot that this young person was slain. I remember advocating a march against violence in his honor but it never happened. Hopefully something will change in Shenandoah Valley; it’s a beautiful place where there are incredible sentient beings that are being misrepresented by the heinous crimes of primitive gang members. My condolences go out to the friends and family of Reginald Shay Nicholson.
