Derrion Albert Beating Death: Jackson, Farrakhan Attend Funeral
CHICAGO (CBS/AP) He was the Chicago teen who was beaten to death on his way home from school, as a cellphone captured the savage attack. His name was Derrion Albert, and he had a "bright future ahead of him" according to civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson and Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, who attended his funeral Saturday.
The two called for an end to youth violence.
Photos: Derrion Albert Beating Death Video
Farrakhan said he came to the funeral because he was "deeply pained" by the death of the 16-year-old honor roll student. The boy was walking to a bus stop after school when a group of teens attacked him during a street fight late last month.
"Such a future we thought was waiting for this young man," Farrakhan said. "This was a special young man of righteous bearing who God took from us so young."
Rev. Jackson demanded children and teens be given safe passage to and from school.
"Derrion didn't have to die," Jackson said. "He was murdered. His pain, his suffering, his death have shook the world."
Cell phone video footage of the attack shows Albert being kicked and hit with splintered railroad ties. Four teens are charged in his death.
Photos: Derrion Albert Beating Death Video
President Barack Obama is sending U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who once led Chicago Public Schools, to the city on Wednesday to meet with school officials, students and residents to talk about school violence.
"The eyes of the world are watching," Pastor E.F. Ledbetter Jr. told mourners at the Greater Mount Hebron Baptist Church on the city's South Side. "This has affected people all over the globe."
Mayor Richard Daley, just off a plane Saturday from an International Olympic Committee meeting in Copenhagen where Chicago lost the 2016 Summer Games, said he would work with police, the community and school officials to break the "code of silence" that happens after street violence.
Police, ministers and community leaders have been asking people to come forward with information about Derrion Albert's killing.
"The code of silence is unacceptable in this day and age where we have young children being killed," Daley said at a news conference at O'Hare International Airport.
Photos: Derrion Albert Beating Death Video
Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis and Chicago Public Schools chief Ron Huberman also attended the funeral, along with other city and public officials. Huberman called the Christian Fenger Academy High School sophomore a "bright light."
As mourners filed into the church, video screens scrolled through pictures of Derrion as a baby and with his family, as well as photos of his academic awards. Some mourners wore T-shirts with Derrion's picture that read "We will always remember you."
The program included a poem Derrion's mother, Janette Albert, wrote to her son titled "May I Go Now?"
"I know you're sad and afraid because I see your tears," she wrote. "I'll not be far. I promise that."
Farrakhan also called for communities to support their youth.
"Let's go get our young people," Farrakhan said. "His righteousness was to serve as a redemptive force to command us to get up and get busy and save our children."
Photos: Derrion Albert Beating Death Video
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