In the nearly nine years since graduating from Centennial High School, Matthew Lennon and a group of boyhood friends from Ellicott City often gathered for impromptu reunions. The last get-together came two weeks ago, when Lennon flew up from Florida to visit his family.
With three other friends, he spent the evening at Nottingham's, a favorite nightclub hangout in Columbia.
"It was pretty serendipitous," recalled Mani Kahn, who had come from New York City the same weekend to see his family. "I'm glad it happened."
Last week, many of Lennon's friends were making plans to return home again, but not for the kind of reunion any of them had expected.
Lennon, 26, who had been living in the Miami area for the past two years, was shot and killed in an apparent murder-suicide in an apartment in Dania Beach on March 28 shortly after midnight.
According to police, Lennon and a friend, Jack Benrube, were at the apartment of Joseph Blanco, another friend, when Blanco shot Lennon in the chest with a Glock revolver shortly after 12:30 a.m. and then killed himself. Benrube, who was injured by an accidental shot, told police that Blanco thought Lennon had attacked Benrube.
Police said Benrube told them he had suffered an asthma attack and was trying to crawl to the balcony for air. All three men had been drinking earlier in the night, police said, with Lennon and Benrube going to a Fort Lauderdale bar to watch the NCAA basketball tournament games before stopping at Blanco's place.
"In the old days, this might have ended up as a fistfight among drunken friends. The difference here is the gun," said Broward County police spokeswoman Dani Moscheller. She said the department has a squad that tracks the use of firearms because of their prevalence in South Florida.
Lennon's mother, Susan, was left to assail the dangerous combination of alcohol and firearms.
"If your child dies in a car accident, you'd say, 'OK, it was a car accident.' To actually be murdered, it's so senseless," she said. "His father is trying to put something on his obituary notice about the drinking and guns and the risks that happen."
Within hours of Lennon's death, a former girlfriend began notifying his old friends from Ellicott City and put together a memorial on Facebook. A similar tribute was started on a blog about the Miami bar scene, where one friend recalled how they kidded "Baltimore" Matt about his accent.
