Friends and family remembered a man who died from his wounds after being stabbed last year. NBC 7’s Matt Rascon reports.
Friends and family gathered in Oceanside on Sunday for the funeral of an unsolved fatal stabbing victim, remembering the man's kind soul and loving heart.
Hugh Pettigrew, 33, died on Feb. 9 after stabbing wounds suffered on Jan. 22, San Diego County Sheriff's investigators said.
The death was tragedy for countless friends and family members, including his older sister and only sibling Latoya Bobo, who remembered him on Saturday night at a service.
“I'm still in shock at this point I still can't believe he's in that casket…He was a special guy, a real special guy and I see he touched a lot of people's hearts, a lot of people's hearts,” she said.
Sheriff's investigators say the 33-year-old man was walking home along the 400 block of Ammunition Road in Fallbrook on Jan. 22 when he was stabbed multiple times. Investigators say the wounded man was able to stumble to his nearby home where he collapsed.
Eternal Hills Memorial chapel in Oceanside filled up quickly with many of those touched hearts on Saturday evening, now heavy with grief, but also full of gratitude, for having known Pettigrew.
“He got me through a lot of stuff in life,” Sherry Weevie said of her friend through her tears. "Weevie still remembers the dance moves Pettigrew taught her to do whenever she was feeling bad.
Friends and loved ones had kind words for Pettigrew, remembering how strong and caring he was.
“He was humble. He was strong. He didn't fight. He was a talker. He was a peacemaker,” friend Jessica Carstens recalled. “He's just like a part of us you know. We all care about him. It's just hard.”
“He looked out for everybody and made sure everybody was okay,” friend Sonya Menard recalled. “That's why it kind of hurt, I felt like nobody was there for him in his time of need."
San Diego County Sheriff’s Homicide detectives are investigating the murder. Part of that investigation is surveillance video from nearby businesses that shows three men--believed to be in their late teens or early twenties--wanted in connection with Pettigrew's murder.
They're seen exiting a red, 1997 Honda Civic, driven by a woman who parked in an Albertson's parking lot.
Homicide detectives say the trio of men headed to the side of the grocery store toward the area where Pettigrew was stabbed around 10:45 p.m. Pettigrew died from his injuries nearly three weeks after the attack.
Detectives are still searching for a motive, though they don't believe it was a robbery.
His family is desperate for answers.
“I know it wasn't my brother who provoked it, he's not a fighter, a gang member, none of that. He's just a big guy, 6 foot 7 inches, three hundred something pounds and was just full of love,“ Bobo said. She traveled from Georgia to attend the funeral.
Bobo says Pettigrew had given her a call just one week before the stabbing, asking if he could live with her for a time.
“I always knew something could happen because he was a big guy and so people would be intimidated because he was a big guy but he wasn't a fighter," she said. "And I'm pretty sure when this thing happened he tried to talk them down, tried to talk them out of it.”
The circumstances surrounding his death sparked mixed emotions at Sunday’s funeral.
”I'm just happy he's in a better place now, that he's not suffering," Menard said.
Others expressed their desire to have his killer behind bars.
"It makes me really mad because people that did it are still out there doing what they're doing right now and he's gone,” Carstens said.
More than anything else, Pettigrew's sister Bobo wants to see the people responsible behind bars.
“My brother got caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time and I want the police to do whatever it takes to find who put my brother in this casket," she said. "He wouldn't want revenge, he would want his killers to serve time and that's what I want.”
The family has set up a GoFundMe page to help with the March 5 funeral at Eternal Hills in Oceanside. The family says left over funds will be used to help victims of violence programs.
