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Family, friends hold memorial event at bus stop crash scene

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – An intersection that’s been filled with grief shifted to a celebration of life as friends and family honored two people killed in a crash.

The incident happened Sunday morning near 29th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Street. Police said a car jumped the curb and hit a bus stop shelter killing two people and sending a third to the hospital.

In tough times people often turn to who they trust to pull through. For the group standing at the familiar near northwest side intersection, that’s each other.

“This is my family and everybody around here that’s in this area right now, we are family,” said Michael Massey.

Most of the people who showed up to that spot aren’t related. But they grew up with each other and like a family, they shared in each other’s joy and sadness. Monday afternoon, it was a combination of both.

About 50 people came together to celebrate Marvin Kinchlow and Eugene Guzman, they’re lifelong friends who were killed a day earlier.

Police said the two men and another man were at the bus stop shelter near the intersection. Police said a driver told them he was going south on MLK when another driver ran a red light, forcing him off the road and into the shelter.

Kinchlow and Guzman would later die from their injuries at the hospital. The third man remains in critical condition.

“The sad part about it is, is that the fact that we don’t know who the third person is,” said Shenika Bigby, Kinchlow’s cousin. She like many others just want to properly pay their respects to the third victim, the same everyone did for Kinchlow and Guzman.

“We grew up on this side of town together,” said Fairley Griffie, who attended the memorial.

“We done marked this street up and down,” said Massey, who helped organize the memorial.

“We do hurt because they’ve gone but them leaving brought us all together,” said Griffie’s wife Sharon.

For a couple hours, the group enjoyed a meal as they stood in the very spot where the crash happened. They shared hugs, tears, and stories of the two friends they lost. “We feed each other and we feed off of each other,” said Massey.

“A neighborhood that prays together stays together, just like a family that prays together stays together,” said Bigby.

She was glad so many people attended, but one person she wishes to meet is the driver involved in the crash. “I really challenge the person that killed them to come out to us and say something to us. Say something, anything. Even I’m sorry would satisfy at least some of us,” she said.

Police haven’t released the name of the third victim, other than saying he’s a man in his 50’s to 60’s.

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