SOUTH LOS ANGELES – The grief for Carnell Snell Jr.’s family is setting in not just because this will be the first Thanksgiving without the 18 year old who was killed by Los Angeles police Oct. 1, but also because another celebration usually took place around this time.

“It’s draining, not so much because of Thanksgiving, but because my nephew would have been 19, as his birthday is the day after Thanksgiving,” said Snell’s great-aunt, Debbie Washington.

Washington arranged an interview with the woman that mothered him since he was 3 years old, Carnell Snell’s great-great-aunt Carlena Hall.

Hall’s face brightens momentarily when asked what Snell was like growing up. She describes the teen as a comedian with “mother wit,” someone with natural intelligence, despite the fact that he was born with fetal alcohol syndrome.

“Carnell had me laughing just about every day,” Hall said with a laugh. “He knew I would [sometimes] get angry, so he always picked on me. He would come to me and say ‘Auntie, I’m your boy, though.’”

Hall also described him as a runner.  Snell ran everywhere he went, she said, even  up and down the massive flight of stairs near the UCLA brain clinic he had to visit regularly.

“He ran constantly,” Hall said.  “These police and sheriff knew who he was. Every time they get at him, he runs. They never tried to shoot him because they knew who he was.  Because he was gonna run.

“I said to him, ‘Carnell, don’t run from the police.  They will kill you.  Why are you running?’ and he says, ‘I don’t know.  I just take off.’”

Carnell Snell Jr.

On Oct. 1 around 2 p.m., Hall’s worst fears were realized. LAPD officers say when they tried to stop a possible stolen vehicle with paper plates two black men got out and ran away.

They chased Snell to the back of a home in the 1700 block of 107th Street, and shot him, even as nearby family members and neighbors shouted to police not to shoot him, and that he was a Regional Center [development disabilities] kid.  Investigators say Snell had a gun.

“I still can’t get over really what happened to him. I saw it,” Hall said. “I was going to get in my car outside, and I saw a car swerve in, and the police, the lady, she jumped out of the car and she immediately started shooting. She didn’t say stop [and say], ‘I’m the police.’ She got out of that car and she started to shoot.”

The 80-year-old matriarch blames herself for not getting outside more quickly.

“If I had got out of this house in time to see him running, I feel I could have stopped him. But I didn’t get out of the house in time,” Hall said.

Snell had jumped a gate behind another building several houses down from his home. Bullets tore through the gate, and into the garage nearby.

And they tore through Snell. His uncle said he saw his nephew bleeding and when he asked police to help him, then went to give aid himself, an officer handcuffed him next to his dying nephew.

“He supposedly had a firearm,” Darnell Snell said. “But nobody saw the firearm, they claim he had a firearm.”

Three days after the shooting Police Chief Charlie Beck released a partial video of the incident, against LAPD regular policy, in what police said was “the interest of public safety.”

“I guess they felt like if people saw that there was a gun, then some people would feel that it’s justified,” Washington said. “But there’s many people who have called us and continue to call us and state that they saw the video and he was running away.”

An LAPD spokesperson said the department does not comment on ongoing investigations

The loss of his nephew weighs heavily on Darnell Snell. Carnell’s father, Darnell’s twin brother, died a few years earlier in a bicycle accident. Carnell’s mother had gone to prison after a fight, leaving Carnell and two other children with his father.   Snell Sr. went to live with his mother, but Hall said the state removed the children and placed them with her because they considered the elder Snell to be unstable.

Washington said she has always warned her kids, her nieces and nephews and even her grandkids not to get involved with drugs, or gangs, to speak respectfully to police, and not to run from police.

She said days before the shooting she and Hall were actively looking for a mentor for the 18 year old, and activities for him. Now, they’re looking for answers into his death.

“We just want to know the facts.  If we at least had the coroner’s report and some information, then we can move on. And we don’t want the attention taken off of CJ because we want the loss of life to count for something.

“If it’s gonna help another young black man live, then we’re hoping that’s what we can do.”

Washington said the local National Action Network chapter and Rev. Al Sharpton remain supportive. The family eventually hired a lawyer, even though Carlena Hall would have preferred not to have one.

When asked why, she sobs and brushes away the tears welling up in her eyes.  “Because money can’t bring him back.”

It’s a reality that’s still sinking in this Thanksgiving.

“There were times when he was not home for the holidays,” Washington said. “But I think [what’s draining] is the finality of it all, the fact that he will never be home for any more holidays and birthdays.”