Classmates of murdered Whitney Young student fundraise, create art in his memory

Whitney Young High School students coped with the stabbing death of an autistic classmate Tuesday by creating art in his honor and fundraising for the boy’s family as police continued to search for his killer.

Brandon Porter-Young was an 18-year-old senior who loved creating artwork and gardening.

So classmates combined the two by creating flowers out of paper and hanging them inside the school.

And because Porter-Young loved basketball, the school planned to host a special basketball game Tuesday night and collect donations at the door that will help his family pay funeral expenses.

“It’s just very, very difficult to lose a student violently like that,” Principal Joyce Dorsey Kenner said.

“But the outpouring that we’ve received thus far . . . it just tells me that people are human, that they have a heart and we just all need to get along.”

Porter-Young was home alone at the time of his death Friday night, said Kenner, who feared that he answered the door for someone who then violently took his life.

He was discovered at 10:07 p.m. on the floor of a hotel room in the 3000 block of West Jackson Boulevard with multiple stab wounds to his upper body. Porter-Young had been staying at the hotel with his mother since early December.

No arrests have been made, police said Tuesday.

Autism limited his verbal skills, and Porter-Young had a hard time communicating with people he didn’t know, according to Corryne Irvin, a special education teacher at Whitney Young.