Though he had dropped out of high school and was completing his GED, Zachariah Hallback had found a cause to believe in: improving inner-city schools.
The 18-year-old was an advocate with the Baltimore Algebra Project, a student-run tutoring group known for its passionate stance on improving education. He regularly wore on his hat a button displaying the group's slogan, "No Education, No Life."
Hallback was shot in a robbery last Wednesday at a bus stop in front of two friends at East 33rd Street and The Alameda in Northeast Baltimore. He had visited a friend who was attending Morgan State University. He died in a hospital Saturday.
"He was funny," Faye Brown, 21, said of her friend during a vigil at the scene of the killing yesterday. "He had a great attitude. He was all about life. All he wanted to do was better himself."
At the vigil, Marvin "Doc" Cheatham, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, pleaded with city residents to help police catch Hallback's killer.
"This was a good kid," Cheatham said, "a good kid who was doing good things with the Algebra Project. ... He was killed senselessly. ... If a young good child like this can be killed - not a bad child, not a kid doing something wrong - then it could happen to any one of us."
He also asked the public to help Hallback's family, which needs money for his funeral, being organized by Israel Baptist Church at 1220 N. Chester St.
Police said Hallback was the second 18-year-old killed in Baltimore since the beginning of the year and the third teenager. On Monday, 14-year-old Edward Smith was gunned down in Cherry Hill. Smith attended ConneXions Community Leadership Academy, a school where Algebra Project volunteers tutor students.
"It's sick," said Jay Gillen, an adviser to the students involved with the Algebra Project. "We've got to change this."
Gillen wrote in an e-mail that Hallback "was completely committed to improve the schools."
"But I know quite a few drug dealers, too, and the fact that the public thinks the death of good kids is more horrific than the death of drug dealers is a large part of the problem, in my view," Gillen wrote. "The public thinks: `Usually it's just dealers killing dealers or addicts killing addicts, so why care very much?'"
Several of Hallback's friends attended the brief street memorial, some shedding tears.
