SAN ANTONIO – At the same football field where they used to cheer him on, hundreds of Shomari Anderson's Harlan High School classmates and others gathered in near silence to remember him Sunday.
Anderson, a junior at Harlan and a wide receiver on its football team, died after a car crash Saturday morning, according to a tweet from the football team's Twitter account.
Social media has been filled with messages of sorrow and mourning, and the gathering Sunday afternoon was somber and subdued.
"It's hurt because someone who had his whole life ahead of him and had so much going for him, it just ended like that," said Anderson's teammate and friend, Harlan High School senior Samuel Carter.
Carter spoke to the crowd at the gathering about his friend and told media afterward that Shomari was a "one of a kind, energetic person."
"He's the life of the party. He's the life of the locker room. He'll always turn a bad situation into a fun one."
And he showed so much potential, Carter said.
"I knew he was on to great things no matter what he did, whether he kept playing football or went off to college, I knew that he would find something great," he said.
Anderson had come to Harlan High School just last year, Carter said. Still, it was obvious from the size of the crowd that he had made a big impact in that short amount of time.
"I'm just so happy to see this kind of turnout. I know 'Sho' would have loved it," Carter said, giving credit to the Harlan community. "But all these people, we're not just family, but they're also - Sho was a special kind of person.”