BATAVIA - The parents of a 15-year-old whose neighbor is accused of shooting him for walking across the lawn sat in his bedroom clinging to each other and their memories while surrounded by the iPod he got for a birthday, a soccer trophy he won last year and stacks of fitness magazines.
Larry and Anita Mugrage of Union Township had gone out of state Sunday to visit a sick relative and did not make it
to the hospital before their son, Larry, died.
"I want my baby back, I can't take this, I can't be strong, I want my baby home," Anita Mugrage wailed Wednesday evening, as friends and family joined them in their home near this city about 20 miles east of Cincinnati.
Larry Mugrage Sr. said he kissed his son goodbye before he and his wife left for West Virginia and told him that he loved him. Anita Mugrage said she spoke to her son later by cell phone and reminded him to be good, adding that she loved him.
"I don't know what we'll do without him," his mother said. "He was the love of our life."
"He was taken from us too early," his father said.
The Mugrage's next-door neighbor, 66-year-old Charles Martin, had confronted the youth about being on his lawn, police said, and Martin told officers he had several disputes with neighbors over walking on his grass.
Mugrage apparently walked across Martin's yard on his way to a friend's house and got into a verbal exchange with him, Union Township police Lt. Scott Gaviglia said Thursday.
"As Mugrage was walking back home a few hours later, Martin saw him and brought the shotgun out," Gaviglia said. Mugrage was shot while standing in the middle of the street in front of Martin's house, with the first round grazing his chest area and the second round hitting him in the side and back, he said.
Mugrage managed to get to his own yard before collapsing, Gaviglia said.
Clermont County Common Pleas Judge Jerry McBride set Martin's bond Thursday a $2 million on a charge of aggravated murder. Martin is scheduled to be arraigned later this month.
Martin, who did not yet have an attorney on record, remained in jail Thursday.
He told a 911 dispatcher on Sunday that that the boy had been "making the other kids harass me and my place, tearing things up." He said in the call that he shot him twice with a .410-gauge shotgun.
A funeral is scheduled for Friday for Mugrage, a freshman at Glen EST High School.
On the family's front stoop was a candle and yellow poster board sign with the words: "Larry will always be in our prayers. R.I.P.," a memorial signed by many.