Teen Slain at Delaware State Is Given an Emotional Tribute

Shalita Middleton had been leading cheers since she was a little girl, and yesterday nearly 1,200 people packed into stadium seating at a church in Northwest Washington, clapping and singing her praises at a rousing, window-rattling, often joyful funeral.

Middleton was just 17 years old when she died last week, a month after she was shot on campus at Delaware State University.

"This is a homecoming," Elder Brenda Allen of Jericho City of Praise church told the hundreds of mourners -- many of them wearing Tigers gear from Woodrow Wilson Senior High School, green Delaware State jackets or cheerleading sweaters from all her schools -- as they gave Middleton a standing ovation. The youth choir from Elon Baptist Church, with which Middleton used to sing, had the mourners at Nineteenth Street Baptist Church on their feet, swaying and waving their arms in the air.

Middleton would have wanted it this way.

She was a girl with a huge personality and an enormous smile, several friends said.

She loved music, said Sherika Hawkins of Suitland, listening to R&B and hip-hop, singing and dancing. She enjoyed school, having graduated with honors from the International Studies Program at Wilson, and had lots of friends. She told her cheerleading squad at Wilson, "Big girls know how to jump, too!" and they nicknamed her Big Girl, or BG.

Her parents shared hugs and scores of photos of her: as a little girl answering a big yellow telephone; a young lady wearing a lavender satin dress with her handsome date; hands on hips in her cheerleading dress, beaming.

Middleton, who was also known as "Lee" and "Cookie," had a room full of Dallas Cowboys and SpongeBob SquarePants gear.

"She was always a lot of fun," said Charbrecca Royster, who grew up with Middleton and went to Delaware State with her. "A really lively person. . . . You never saw her without a smile on her face."

Middleton started at Delaware State this fall, joining the cheerleading squad, studying biology and planning to specialize in forensics. (She loved watching "CSI" and "Law and Order.")

But early Sept. 21, shots were fired in the middle of campus, and she was hit twice in the abdomen. Another freshman from Washington, Nathaniel Pugh, was also wounded.

Police arrested Loyer Braden in his freshman dorm room a few days later.

After weeks at Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del., with her parents at her side, Middleton died Oct. 23.

Steven Johnson, a trauma surgeon at Christiana, broke down yesterday afternoon as he talked about the last month with Middleton, spending sleepless nights "holding her hand, telling her it was going to be okay."

As he sobbed, some called out to him, "It's all right. It's okay, baby."

"There's something wrong when we have children that just want an education and their life is taken away from them," Johnson said. "It's my hope that something good can come from this."

Moments later, the L.A. Family Singers were belting out gospel with the crowd shouting along. The homecoming was back in swing.