A Young Designer, Murdered

In Washington, D.C., Ben's Chili Bowl is a fixture. Located on historic U Street, it's walls boast photos of the celebrities who have visited the establishment over the past 50 years. There's Bill Cosby and Bono, Chris Rock and Hillary Clinton.

Behind the counter, Tim Spicer was less famous--a smiling, ubiquitous presence. I got to know him years ago. The 25-year-old would always help me get service even at a big rush hour when the place would be packed. I'd tip him accordingly and we'd talk. He'd ask about my kid; I'd ask about his ambitions to start his own clothing line.

Several times he offered to show me what he was working on but he'd get too busy flinging fries and burgers and milkshakes to get around to it, and so our relationship ended at the counter although we talked about getting together to look at his stuff and my lending him some money.

He was always smiling which sounds like a cliché but in this case it happened to be true. He had a phenomenal memory. Every time I gave him a meal order, urging him to write it down, amidst the frenzy of customers, he'd remember that I wanted my half-smoke with chili and onions but no mustard and my kid would take the veggie burger with cheese.

On Saturday night, Tim was murdered.

He was the 169th victim of homicide this year in the District of Columbia.

His killing got additional attention because it marked a milestone, the total number of citizens killed last year which means that 2007 will surely beat 2006's grim total. I would have read past Tim's death in today's Washington Post had I not known him and liked him so much.

He was apparently carjacked on Saturday night, assaulted by a group of men who took his 1994 Chevrolet Caprice that he loved. He was on his way home from work at Ben's when he was shot and staggered to a nearby subway stop for help where he collapsed.

He died a couple of hours later at Howard University Hospital. His car was found elsewhere in the city.

I had talked to Tim about investing in his clothing line and today I read in the Post that he had lined up other investors, not surprisingly for such a winning kid.

He'd worked for years at Ben's but he had other plans. He'd dropped out of high school at 16 but had gotten his GED and was arranging loans and trying to go to Howard University. I started crying when I read all this at Starbucks this morning.

On Saturday night, while Tim was being murdered, I was in another part of Washington, D.C. attending the lavish Bar Mitzvah held by a banking executive for his son. The affair was fun, filled with big-shot Washington types, a few hundred people, tons of food, pasha-like tents over each table, even a video tribute to the Bar Mitzvah boy.

I imagine the affair easily cost a couple of hundred grand. There's nothing wrong with wealth. Tim surely aspired to it. But to know that I live in a city, the nation's capital, where a kid with charm and ambition can get blown away for a car while other people are so utterly immune from such a menace makes his murder somehow more tragic.