Well over 100 people came to Bicentennial Park on a clammy, rainy Wednesday afternoon to pay their respects to Deejion Fullman, the 14-year-old boy who drowned in the Mispillion River Monday night.

"He was a beautiful kid, so beautiful, and I want to thank the community for what they've done," Cassandra Hatton, Deejion's aunt, said at the memorial. "All the people — everywhere, here, on the bridge, it means a lot to us."

"The kids planned it," said Stephanie Dukes, a "school mom" at Milford Middle School. "I just got a call telling me that it was going to be here, but they did everything."

Deejion graduated from 8th grade at MMS in June, and would have been part of the inaugural class at the Milford Central Academy when it is scheduled to open next month.

"He was such a good kid at heart," said Walt Hoey, who worked with Deejion at MMS. "Everybody who knew him is going to miss him."

Milford Police Dept. Lt. Steve Rust said Deejion was playing basketball with friends on a fenced-in court near the Mispillion riverbanks at about 7 p.m. when the accident happened. The basketball they were using squirted through a hole in the fence and rolled to the river. While trying to fish it out from the shore, Deejion climbed down the rocks at the water's edge and into the river where the current caught him.

"He always had to show everybody else that he could do," said Meredith Jones, who was one of Deejion's soccer coaches in middle school. "I'm not surprised to hear that when he was pressured to go, he was the one that went in and tried to get it. He wanted to show everybody else that he could."

Rust's report says Deejion was pulled underwater quickly, but not before onlookers tried to help him.

"Steven, the boy who went out there who tried to get him — he was always challenged, in that he wasn't the best player, but he was always willing to keep trying and do what other people wouldn't," Jones said. "I don't think there's been enough said about him."

Thanks to social-networking forums like Facebook, the word of Deejion's death spread across Milford in a flash, and by the next morning, plans for a tribute had taken shape. Dozens of his friends and classmates came to Bicentennial Park at noon Wednesday, Aug. 18, to write memorial messages to him on their "Class of 2014" shirts, which they will wear to school when classes open on Sept. 7.

"He was always running around, he always had a smile on his face, and if it was the worst day ever, he could still put a smile on your face," said Isaiah Fidderman, a Milford High School senior. "He was like a little brother to me … I'm just trying to keep smiling. I know he'd want us to."