I have a pretty tough shell after 13 years of blogging, but this report by Elisa Crouch about 18-year old Michael Brown, gunned down by a police officer yesterday in Missouri, brought tears to my eyes. What a tragic loss to the world. Michael Brown Remembered as a ‘Gentle Giant’.

Michael Brown posted a haunting message on Facebook last week as he prepared to enter a new phase in his life — college.

“if i leave this earth today,” he wrote to a friend, “atleast youll know i care about others more then i cared about my damn self.”

Brown, 18, died Saturday after a Ferguson police officer shot him multiple times outside an apartment complex as he walked to his grandmother’s home. Brown was two days from starting class at Vatterott College. Close friends had been packing up and departing for schools such as Kansas State University and Arkansas Baptist University on sports scholarships.

“Everyone else wanted to be a football player, a basketball player,” said Gerard Fuller, who had known Brown since second grade at Pine Lawn Elementary School. “He wanted to own his own business. He’d say, ‘Let’s make something out of nothing.’”

Brown graduated from high school at the predominately African-American Normandy High School, a high-poverty school in a district that has been at the center of legislative battles and a string of politically charged decisions by the Missouri Board of Education.

Teachers described Brown as a “gentle giant,” a student who loomed large and didn’t cause trouble. Friends describe him as a quiet person with a wicked sense of humor, one who loved music and had begun to rap. He fought an uphill battle to graduate.

Read the whole thing.