Darren Pratcher, a 17-year-old from the tough Iron Triangle neighborhood in Richmond, Calif., was found guilty of first-degree murder Wednesday in the 2004 killing of University football recruit Terrance Kelly.
The conviction ends two years of his loved ones’ waiting for legal recourse, but it hasn’t ended their pain.
At De La Salle High School, a prestigious boys’ school in suburban Concord, Calif., four best friends lived football together: Terrance Kelly, Cameron Colvin, Jackie Bates and Willie Glasper.
It took up all their energy, said Colvin, a current Ducks wide receiver. De La Salle “got you out of the hood,” he said.
All four graduated in the summer of 2004 and planned to play football for the Ducks that fall. But on Aug. 12, days before Kelly was to leave for training camp in Eugene, he was shot four times and killed.
The defense attorney in the case admitted that Pratcher fired the fatal shots, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, but said Pratcher was looking for someone other than Kelly that night – killing him by mistake.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Colvin said.
Colvin was standing in his family’s kitchen when his godfather ran down the stairs, aghast. Colvin immediately knew something was wrong, but when his godfather told him Kelly was dead, “it didn’t even register.”
He grabbed his cell phone, and on the screen it said he had missed 21 calls. He phoned Terrell Ward, now a redshirt Duck freshman, and heard him crying.
Colvin’s godfather and uncle went to the scene of the crime, and when they arrived they put him on speakerphone.
Over the phone, Colvin said, “I could hear (Kelly’s) grandmother crying and screaming, ‘No, no, it isn’t true!’”
Bates, a current Ducks cornerback, was leaving to see the crime scene and invited Colvin to come along, but “I just couldn’t,” Colvin said.
After hearing the verdict, and learning that Kelly’s death may have been an accident, Colvin said, “I don’t know what happened between them, but I know Terrance wasn’t the type of person to cross somebody.”
In the years since Kelly’s death, Colvin said, their families have grown closer. Landrin Kelly, Terrance’s father, still calls Colvin and Bates regularly because he knows his son’s death “didn’t just affect him,” Colvin said.
“We’re just babies to them,” he said. “It could happen to any one of us.”
At the University, Colvin said, “we have the opportunity to get out of there and come play ball and get an education and be a part of the community.”
But he still misses his friend.
“We bonded on the field, and on the weekends, we’d kick it,” Colvin said.
Kelly “was one of my best friends,” he said. “Like brothers.”
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.