Durham Reporter

Reshaun Cates had turned his life around over the past two years to the point that he was working as a violence interrupter for Bull City United, his mother said.

Although he dedicated part of his time to mediating altercations before they turned deadly, he still fell prey to the Raleigh’s rising homicide rate, as he was shot to death Sunday while he was driving to pick up his 1-year-old son.

"It's something no parent should have to do, and now I've got do it,” his mother, Doris Cates, said in a WTVD report this week. 

Someone fired while Cates was driving on the off ramp from I-85 North to Hillandale Road. He was dead when first responders arrived at the scene.

Doris had been worried about Reshaun because she couldn’t reach him by phone.

"I called my baby boy, because we share each other's location," the mother recounted. "Asked, 'Have you heard from Marbles?' We call him Marbles. He checked his location and said, 'Ma, he's on Hillandale.’ I said, 'Well I've been calling all morning and he's not answering.' He said, 'Ma, he's on Hillandale, just sitting still.'" 

The younger son went to the scene where the phone tracker indicated Reshaun was located and found him. 

It’s a tragedy that came after he had worked so hard to get on the right path, Cates noted.

”He was really into gang stuff and then he turned his whole life around,” she said, adding that he had turned to community advocacy and became a good family man. 

"When it came to Malachi, everybody got put on hold,” Cates said of Reshaun’s devotion to his infant son. “Even down to me. I'd call and he'd say, 'I've got Malachi in the tub. I'm on daddy duty.’"  

Now his son will have to grow up without a father.