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Candles, music, memories honor Hubbard man
HUBBARD
Along Orchard Avenue in the chilly dampness Thursday evening, a somber crowd was gathering.
It included a lot of younger people — in their 20s, like he was.
They were parking along Main Street and in lots where businesses had donated spaces for the occasion, and were hurrying over to the intersection of Main and Orchard.
They filed a short way along Orchard, normally a quiet side street, where they stood, waiting until 8 p.m., when they would begin to remember him — their friend Cody Pitts.
What happened to Pitts, 26, on Orchard Avenue in that spot early Saturday is still a mystery to the tight-knit community of Hubbard.
He was found dead on the ground from a gunshot wound about 3 a.m. by someone driving by.
If police have made any breakthrough yet in their investigation into the homicide, they aren’t ready to release the information.
“Nothing we can speak of,” said Police Chief Jim Taafe.
Taafe, who knew Pitts, said he was well-liked.
“You will go through this entire community and not find anybody to say a bad word about that boy,” he said.
The people who filled the street clutching candles and hanging on to the words of his best friends as they memorialized him were a strong testament to that, Taafe pointed out.
It was about 15 of his friends who organized the vigil, said Joe Marando, a patrol officer on the Hubbard police force who also graduated with Pitts from Hubbard High School.
The memorial to Pitts, Marando said, will stand on Orchard Avenue for a reason.
“When you drive by Orchard Avenue in Hubbard, we don’t want you to think of the bad that happened,” Marando said. “It’s a testament to how good a person he was.”
“Cody Pitts,” said Ryan Mills, another friend who graduated with him. “If I could sum him up in a few words: Caring, loving, a gentle giant ... his door was always open to us.
“Whenever I was in a bad mood, all I had to do was talk to him.
“He touched us all as a brother, son and friend. He was a good man, and he lived a good life.”
“It means a lot to see all you people out here,” said Al Pitts, Cody’s father.
Miriam Fife, whose son, Raymond, was murdered in 1985 when he was only 12, made her way to the vigil to console Pitts’ parents.
Fife’s grief and her understanding of how it feels to lose a child led her into a 30-year career as an advocate for victims and survivors, and she founded the Trumbull County chapter of Parents of Murdered Children.
She retired Thursday from the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office, but still she found herself reaching out to help.
“I just give them a hug and I tell them how sorry I am,” Fife said.
She attended the vigil with Joyce Anna, another Parents of Murdered Children member whose 12-year-old grandson was killed by a drunken driver five years ago.
“It’s a club you never want to join,” Anna said.