Mayor agrees to Rodney Square plaque for slain man

WILMINGTON Mayor Dennis P. Williams announced Monday evening that the city will install a permanent plaque at Rodney Square to honor a man who police said was killed there last week protecting a woman and baby from a deranged man with a knife.

He previously opposed the idea for a memorial at that location.

At a Monday afternoon vigil, friends and relatives called for a permanent memorial for the rapper, skateboarder and tattoo artist Thomas L. “Cannibal” Cottingham, 27, of Wilmington, at the spot of the attack where the good Samaritan repeatedly was stabbed in the neck and torso.

Cottingham died at Christiana Hospital last Monday from the wounds when he intervened to protect a 21-year-old woman who was pushing her 6-month-old daughter in a stroller, according to police.

Aaron McManus, a barber from Wilmington first met Cottingham 11 years ago in the same area of Rodney Square. He said a plaque would have a positive effect on those who would view it. It would not be up for debate, he added, had it been a police officer who died.

“He was a regular guy who stood up,” McManus said. “People would come to see that he put his life in front of other people’s lives.”

Desiree Pulliam from New Castle knew Cottingham since she was in the sixth grade, “since before the piercings,” she said. Cottingham did the job of the police one week ago, she said, and a plaque is what “you have to do.”

“A man losing his life on this corner doesn’t make sense,” Pulliam said. “It hurts to see it.”

The mayor issued a statement last week offering condolences to Cottingham’s family and praising him as a hero. The city sponsored another vigil at Rodney Square on Monday at 9:30 p.m. to honor Cottingham at the same time he gave his life a week earlier. It was there that Williams announced his support for a memorial plaque.

At one time, city police provided plaques.

Charged with the difficult duty of removing plush animals, candles, balloons, and other tributes, police understood that removing such tributes hurt and angered the grieving.

They came up with a simple idea of replacing those memorials with plaques.

They developed a policy of allowing sidewalk memorials until the day of a homicide victims’ burial or shortly thereafter, replacing them with markers about the size of a license plate, with the victim’s name and years of birth and death. After about a month, such plaques were removed and presented to the victims’ families.

That practice was discontinued at the mayor’s direction shortly after it began.

Williams also said that the city plans to honor Cottingham with a posthumous award. Details of that honor are being worked out, he said.

Although the city didn’t know about the afternoon vigil, the one at 9:30 p.m. was arranged in collaboration with Cottingham’s family, according to Tonya R. Richardson, a public relations and communications officer in the mayor’s office.

The push for a permanent plaque at Rodney Square was announced as more than 100 people, including members of Wilmington’s PeaceKeepers group, gathered Thursday night at the square, where they held hands in a prayer circle for Cottingham and his family.

Fueling the push for a permanent tribute was mourners dismay over city employees starting to deflate balloons and disassemble a makeshift memorial at the square. Friends said they stopped the city employees, took home the tributes people had left, then returned and replaced them at the square.

Since Cottingham’s death, there have been many tributes honoring the Alexis I. du Pont High School graduate as a hero, including a post on the Facebook page and website of the Insane Clown Posse, a Detroit-based hip-hop duo.

The pair posted that, two months ago. Cottingham won the top honor at the annual national Gathering of the Juggalos, as their fans are known, out-rapping the other contestants.

Department of Transportation Secretary Jennifer Cohan on Thursday presented a medal to a DART driver Renaldo Epps, 42, of Wilmington, who witnessed the attack on Cottingham, called 911, then whisked the mother, baby and bystanders to safety inside his bus. Both Cohan and Epps, who accepted the medal on Cottingham’s behalf, called him a hero.

A Facebook tribute also was set up along with a GoFundMe account for donations toward funeral expenses. City officials say the state Victims Compensation Fund also will assist with burial costs.

Cottingham’s funeral is 11 a.m. Thursday with viewing 9-10:45 a.m. that day only at Congo Funeral Home, 2317 N. Market Street, where donations toward funeral expenses also may be made. Burial will be in Silverbrook Cemetery at DuPont Road and Lancaster Avenue, Wilmington.

Calvin Hooker III, 25, of Elsmere, is being held without bail at Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington, charged with first-degree murder and six other felonies in Cottingham’s death and the alleged pursuit of the woman and her baby.

Investigators found no link between Hooker and the woman and baby he pursued, or any prior connection between him and Cottingham, city police said.

When captured after an extended chase with help from witnesses and bystanders, city officers had guns drawn on Hooker as he drew the knife from the pocket of his shorts and begged police to kill him, according to court documents.

Staff reporters Karl Baker and Esteban Parra contributed to this story.

Contact robin brown at (302) 324-2856 or rbrown@delawareonline.com. Find her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter @rbrowndelaware.