Coach Tommie Patterson knew that Armoni Sexton was too good to be playing for his Paterson Charter squad. He also knew that living in Paterson's notorious 4th Ward was not safe for the promising prospect, and the plan was to send him to a major prep school.

VIDEO: "The sky was the limit" for shooting victim Armoni Sexton

"Everyone was in agreement, 'We've got to get him out of here.' We were going to send him to a prep school, if not at the end of this year then definitely the end of next year, his sophomore year," Patterson told NJ Advance Media on Sunday. "He was too good of a player to stay at our school, and I knew it, and were going to put him in a better situation. If not Oak Hill (Va.), down there with Kevin Boyle at Montverde (Fla.), somewhere. We went to his house this summer and told him, 'Hey man, you've got to go to prep school.' He was like 'I'm not going to prep school.'"

Sexton was shot and killed near his home on Saturday night at the age of 15 in a drive-by shooting, according to Patterson, sending the New Jersey basketball community into mourning.

Patterson remembers the first time he met Sexton. He was "a firecracker," Patterson says, tough and immature — a product of the hostile environment he was raised in.

"He had to put on this mask to show that he was a tough kid because of where he lived at, if he wasn't tough they saw him as weak," Patterson said. "When he first came into our school in the sixth grade, I always said to him, 'It's cool to be corny here.' These kids are not tough kids. Even if they are on their block, they don't show it in our building. It's okay, you can let your guard down and just be you."

Sexton didn't want to leave his home or the school that made him feel like a member of the family.

"He got comfortable there. He understood it and he was okay. He was a good kid," Patterson said. "That's what I don't understand. I know how it happened — it was a drive-by shooting, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

A nationally ranked prospect in the 2018 class, Sexton averaged 16.3 points, eight rebounds, 1.9 assists, 3.2 blocks and 2.4 steals per game playing playing as an 8th-grader for Paterson Charter. Patterson saw Sexton as a blend of three great Paterson players — Fuquan Edwin of Seton Hall, Kimmani Barrett from LaSalle and Rutgers' Marquis Webb.

"He scored like Fuquan, in terms of being able to get buckets in transition on the high school level, he could get baskets in transition easily. You'd look at the score and be like, 'Dang, he got 12 points, where did he get them?' Off rebounds, steals. I coached Kimmani Barrett. He had a little of Kimmani in him where he would knock down a three here and there. He wasn't consistent. He would post up and do a little bit off the dribble. But nothing consistently. But then he was a student of the game like Marquis Webb, who I also had the privilege of coaching," Patterson said. "He was a combination of the three of them, and he was getting better and he was going to be bigger. He's 6-foot-6. I thought the sky was the limit."

Jeremy Schneider may be reached at jschneider@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @J_Schneider. Find NJ.com on Facebook.