So Sad: Black Lives Matter Activist MarShawn McCarrell Commits Suicide on Ohio Statehouse Steps

BY: Denver Sean

Published 9 years ago

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23-year-old Black Lives Matter activist MarShawn McCarrel shot himself in front of the Ohio Statehouse building in Columbus on Monday night.

via NY Daily News:

“My demons won today. I’m sorry,” the activist, who recently attended the NAACP Image Awards, posted on his Facebook page about 3 p.m., just hours before his body was found near the Statehouse.

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His last tweet read: “Let the record show that I pissed on the state house before I left.”

No one witnessed the shooting, Cvetan said. McCarrel was pronounced dead at the scene.

His mother Leatha Wellington and twin brother MarQuan McCarrel later told the Dispatch he put his causes before himself.

They suspect the never-ending and disturbing nature of his activist and charity work left him mentally and physically exhausted in a way they didn’t realize, they said.

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“He impacted so many people, touched so many lives,” Wellington said.

“He was just so creative,” said McCarrel. “He just wanted to serve people.” 

McCarrel, who had recently worked with Black Lives Matter, helped organize protests in Ohio after a Missouri cop shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in 2014.

He also founded youth mentorship program Pursuing Our Dreams, which launched Feed the Streets, a project to help Ohio’s homeless.

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He attended the NAACP’s Image Awards on Friday, Pursuing Our Dreams wrote on its Facebook.

The 23-year-old community organizer was named one of Radio One’s Hometown Champions, an award for community activists and volunteers, earlier this year and earned a trip to the California awards show. He took his mom to the Friday night ceremony.

“He is selfless and will give his last in order to make sure others don’t go without,” read a nomination page for the Hometown Champions Award. “MarShawn has come so far in life and has inspired so many people to help others”

McCarrel was homeless for three months after he graduated from high school — an experience that inspired him to help others, according to his nomination.        

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“When MarShawn got back on his feet, he felt the need to give back because so many people helped him when he was down,” it read. “MarShawn stresses the importance of having conversations with the people we feed because they’ll get hungry in 2 hours but a good conversation will carry them over for a lifetime.”

Tragic news. RIP MarShawn.

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