‘He really wanted to make us proud of him,’ fatally shot teen’s grandmother says

Tiris Coleman Jr. received his letterman’s jacket for football just two weeks ago and ordered his class ring.

The Shadow Ridge senior was slated to graduate this year and had offers to play college ball, his mom said. But it was all cut short Sunday — just weeks before his 18th birthday.

“He had dreams,” his maternal grandmother, Belinda Burns said. “He really wanted to make us proud of him.”

About 25 of Coleman’s family members and friends spilled out of his grandmother’s small Martin Luther King Boulevard apartment and into its front yard. They hugged and laughed and cried as they remembered Coleman.

But they were all there to be strong for Quiana Burns, 37, who was raising Tiris alone as a single mother.

They swarmed around her while she spoke softly and tears welled in her eyes. She stared into the distance as she spoke of her only child, as though the shock of the loss hadn’t sunk in yet. When she lost her words, family and friends chimed in to fill the silence.

When she wept, they dried her tears.

“He was just a very kind-hearted kid,” she said.

He was with his uncle and his cousins at the basketball court near the West Las Vegas Library, 951 W. Lake Mead Blvd., when he was shot, she said.

The last time they spoke, Coleman asked her to pick him up from his grandmother’s house nearby, she said.

She said he wasn’t the type to go out and cause trouble. He’d rather bring friends back to his Aliante home to hang out.

Quiana Burns was quick to correct her son if he stepped out of line, said her cousin, Milton Burns.

“She didn’t tolerate it,” he said. “So that’s how you know he was raised well.”

Everybody called Coleman “June June,” a play on the Junior in his name. His father, Tiris Coleman, still lives in Las Vegas.

Coleman loved going to church with his mother, his paternal grandmother, Lurleen Coleman, said in a phone interview late Monday afternoon.

Like the people at the apartment gathering, Lurleen Coleman said Tiris was good.

“Whatever was going on, believe me, he was an innocent bystander,” she said.

Belinda Burns was already coping with tragedy when the shooting happened. Her sister, niece and brother-in-law were killed in a Jan. 19 apartment fire less than 100 yards from where Coleman was gunned down, she said.

“We’re really going through a lot, and we want justice,” she said.

Contact Blake Apgar at bapgar@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5298. Follow @blakeapgar on Twitter.