His girlfriend, Margarita Quevedo-Walker, dropped Love off at work the night he was murdered. He was simply gunned down on the sidewalk, just blocks from his home. There was no particular incident leading up to the murder that provide clues about motive, or suspects he didn’t argue with anyone and was thought to be alone as he walked. The night he was murdered, he was doing what he did countless times, going home from work. Love had a seemingly stellar reputation in Seattle, with no known enemies. He was the provider for his family, including his mother, sisters, and girlfriend. At 26, he was part founder and owner of a successful business with friends and business partners Jamar Jones and Bruce Williams. Love was none of the things Seattle typically associates with shootings and murders of black men.
As far as the media was concerned, if Love was murdered because of gang affiliation, then in a way he was responsible for his own death it’s a narrative we see time and time again. The mainstream media, quick to report such incidents as gang-related violence, initially did the same with Love’s murder, casting him an unsympathetic victim, blaming assumed yet inaccurate self-created circumstances. It was one of the few times the mayor himself, and not a delegate, attended the funeral of a homicide victim, specifically a black man. The bullets that killed Love hit his family, friends, his neighborhood, and the city at large. A city, across neighborhoods, race, religion, class and age, collectively knocked down, and stunned into disbelief, despair, and anger. When the Seattle Police Department confirmed the identity of the man gunned down near 27th and Cherry February 15th, 2009 it was unlike anything most had seen or felt before.
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