'Recovery week' planned for Mervo High as community mourns loss of 'a loving son'
BALTIMORE -- The Mergenthaler Vocational Technical High School community continues to grieve after one of its students was shot outside the high school last Friday. The victim, Jeremiah Brogden, was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
A 17-year-old from another city school has been arrested and charged with first degree murder, police said. The teen suspect has not been identified.
Schools were closed Monday because of the Labor Day holiday, but city school officials released plans on how students will be eased back into their academic routine for the rest of the week, and there is a heavy focus on counseling.
On Tuesday, doors at Mervo will open at 11 a.m. and students will able to have lunch. Then, for the remainder of the afternoon, there will be counseling. Attendance is not mandatory, but it's encouraged for students as they deal with the trauma of losing a school-mate outside their school building.
Per the details that were released on the Baltimore City Public schools Twitter page, Wednesday will have staggered opening times based on grades and students will report to school at normal times for Thursday and Friday.
Brogden was many things to many people. His family described him as a "devoted big brother" and "a loving son."
Coaches said he was "a talented football player." And his most recent and perhaps most important role was father to a newborn.
But Friday, all of that ended when was he was killed outside his school.
"Extremely heartbreaking, because everybody saw him as the pinnacle of the work that you want to see come to fruition in a student," said Lenise White, an educator and mentor for Brogden while he was a student at Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys.
White said she was like a second mom during Brogden's middle school years.
"We all poured into him and to see everything that we put in, everything that we instilled, everything that we laid the foundation for, for him to live up to it and then for it to be snatched away... It was it was heart wrenching," said White.
In a statement shared with WJZ, Brogden's family said: "He was a devoted big brother and father. A loving son and a talented football player. We are sad to see his life cut short and we're having a hard time understanding why this tragedy has happened. His parents are still trying to understand how you can spend time loving, nurturing and coaching a young man, instilling the values of faith, hard work and dedication into him, only to have him robbed from you at the blink of an eye leaving school. Jeremiah's family, church family, team and school family will miss him and carry his legacy with us forever."
Brogden's former coach at Baltimore Collegiate, Evan Singleton, said Brogden had dreams to one day play Division I college football and to one day advance to the NFL.
"It's a complete shock to the community as a whole -- family siblings, teammates, former classmates, everybody's talking about it. And you know, it's just a really sad moment," said Singleton. "It's a tragedy, because he has so much of his life ahead of him. You know, that was his sanctuary on the field."
