Teenagers Visit Parking Lot Memorial for Chris Poeung

A large mound of about 20 bouquets of flowers appeared today on the pavement in the parking lot across from the Main St. Skytrain Station. The flowers appeared at the exact spot where Chris Poeung, 13, lay after being fatally stabbed late yesterday afternoon, allegedly by a 14 year old boy.

All afternoon, teenagers came and went. They stood around the bouquets of flowers in the almost empty parking lot, talking, in the Vancouver drizzle. There were neatly printed messages on some of the bouquets at their feet:

"R.I.P. baby bro,
I love you lots and I miss you."
Melay

"You were like a brother to me."
Annie Tran

"...you will never be forgotten."
Deanna Tran

At about 6:15 p.m., when I last went by, there were 10 young people standing by the bouquets.

A tree at the edge of the parking lot, a few meters south of the mound of flowers on the pavement, had a new, white, spray-painted message on it: a heart and below it the large letters, "R.I.P. C.P." A piece of yellow police tape lay twisted on the grass below. Nearby on the grass, somebody had placed a round container of bright pink flowers.

Local residents dropping into McDonalds next door for coffee were talking about the fact that Chris Poeung had died. Barry, a pensioner who has lived on Downtown Eastside for 30 years said that after leaving McDonalds yesterday, one of the Asian teenagers was in such a hurry to get out of that parking lot that, "He almost knocked me over." But Barry is street smart. He believes there is a history between some of these teenagers that we don't know about: "Somebody doesn't just start stabbing people for no reason."

CTV has since spoken to Chris Poeung's girlfriend, Cathy Le, who said the fight that resulted in Poeung's death was over a girl. But Poeung was not even directly involved, she said.