Martinus Mitchum loved three things.
He loved church, where you could find him every Sunday and Thursday.
He loved children, though he did not have any of his own.
And he loved law enforcement, the career path he was so ambitious about and the one that ultimately led to his tragic death Friday night.
Mitchum, a Tulane University police officer and reserve constable of the 2nd City Court, was working on a security detail during a basketball game at George Washington Carver High School when he was shot dead. Mitchum died after intervening in an altercation between John Shallerhorn and a school administrator, and police say Shallerhorn subsequently admitted to police that he shot Mitchum.
“It hurts because he was one of the best,” said Lyn Clark, a former soccer player at O. Perry Walker High School, where Mitchum worked from 2006-2016. “They killed someone who helped so many African-American students get out there and become something. He always supported everything. How do you take the life of someone who helped the lives of so many people who they thought would not be not “anything?”
Clark, now 26, was one of the people Mitchum always checked. But Mitchum, or ‘Mitch’ as everyone called him, checked everyone.
Everyone was to me ‘my son’ or ‘my daughter’.
“We will always tease him and tell Mitch you have more children than anyone to be so young,” said Sheryl Eaglin, a former Mitchum collaborator.
Mitchum and Eaglin both started working for O. Perry Walker in 2006. He eventually became like a family to her.
“He would irritate me like a brother sometimes, but he was so genuine and there was nothing he would do for the kids,” Eaglin said.
Mitchum, a native of Detroit, was security at the school when he first started. But it did not last long.
“We moved him to another position because of how well he handled the kids and his other skills,” said Tarance Davis, the school’s former athletic director. Mitchum is in charge of student data and enrollments and has also become the director of basketball and football operations.
In the 2013-14 school year, O. Perry Walker merged with Landry High School to form Landry-Walker and the school won the state’s basketball championship the first season. It was the first of three state titles in four years for the school.
“We probably would not have had those championships we had in basketball if it were not for Mitch,” Davis said. “He just has a heart for the well-being of children. He played an important role in the organization and the administrative part of the program that it became.”
Brian Gibson was the coach of those teams and said they would not be able to do it without Mitchum, who handled all the administrative duties. He booked hotels on travel, made the food arrangements and did all the other duties behind the scene.
“He was really responsible and made sure all our business was in place,” Gibson said. “We were very successful, and a lot of it was because I did not have to worry about things. You think about how many children we could send to college. He worked directly with them to make sure they had what they had. and they respected him for it. It was nothing but love for him and the children. He expected certain things and wanted it to be done in a certain way, and I think the children got it from appreciate him. ‘
Because of his love for the church, many family members in his hometown of Detroit thought he would grow up to be a preacher. But law enforcement was his dream, and he pursued it. He graduated from the Slidell Police Department’s Basic Reserve Police Academy in 2014. He also spent time as an officer at Loyola University. “(Mitchum) was a dedicated police officer who had a heart of service to the Tulane community,” Tulane officials said in a statement Saturday.
Mitchum, who was in uniform at the time of the shooting, was taken to the University’s medical center by paramedics and pronounced dead shortly afterwards.
“The thing I was most proud of was seeing the escort to the hospital,” Eaglin said as police paved the way for the ambulance in the Interstate. “He deserves it. If you could choose how you could go, that would probably be what Mitch would have chosen with security. He liked to protect people, like the kids who were in that gym. We do not know what could have happened. not if this person came to the gym with a gun. ‘
Mitchum often commented publicly on the state of law enforcement in the country. Just two days before his death, he wrote on Twitter that he supports the requirements that officers must wear body cameras and that officers are preferred to be certified if they perform poor work or appear to be racist.
On Thursday, he tweeted a message from Vice President Kamala Harris, who supports the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which is named after the man who was killed by Minneapolis police in 2020 and wants to revive qualified immunity for law enforcement, among other things.
In their own statement, Carver officials called Mitchum “a match” at sporting events at school and noted how he had sacrificed his life to fulfill his duty.
“It is with a heavy heart … that we honor his memory,” reads Carver’s statement.
“This is a tragic situation for … everyone who has had to experience it,” said Easton’s chairman of the board, David Garland.
Attorney reporters Ramon Antonio Vargas and Della Hasselle contributed to this report.