Twelve-year-old Nathan Castaneda stood on the corner of 96th Street and Avenue L on the East Side Thursday afternoon, waving a big pink sign and shouting.
“Donation car wash. Donation car wash for boy who was killed.”
The traffic here is sparse, and even slower when the bridges are raised over the rivers that bisect this neighborhood from the rest of the city. Minutes passed with no traffic.
Still, the boy and other friends and relatives of 10-year-old Gustavo Garcia gathered here, trying to raise money so they could help the boy’s family with funeral costs.
“We’re trying to do it for a couple days,” the boy’s mother Maria Lena said. The church across the street – Saint George Roman Catholic Parish – owns the parking lot behind her home and are letting them wash cars there until 6 p.m. each night.
Business was slow Thursday afternoon. After hours of work they had raised about $100. The parking lot is closed by an iron fence on Ewing Avenue and concrete K-rail barriers on 96th Street.
Before he was shot to death, Gustavo and his stepfather stopped by Lena’s house about 11 p.m. They left and a car pulled alongside theirs, a block south on 97th Avenue, and someone inside started shooting.
Not long after, someone came to the house, looking for Lena’s husband.
“Tavo’s been shot, Tavo’s been shot,” he said.
By about 3 a.m., 12-year-old Nathan had found out he was dead. He was shocked at first, not quite sure how to react. He wanted to believe it wasn’t real.
“Nobody can compare to the parents,” Nathan said. “But I’m pretty upset. It’s crazy how somebody could do that to the little boy … I didn’t cry but a few days ago, we went to (an) uncle’s house, seeing how they reacted, tears started to come. But I tried to hold it back. It’s sad.”
He, his younger brother Ashton and a couple other cousins and relatives flocked from their posts to the lot whenever a car pulled in, taking turns scrubbing, rinsing or wiping the cars dry.
Between the infrequent washes, the kids would get restless.
“Don’t give up. You seen we had like four cars at once,” their mother told them. “Once they see the cars getting washed they’ll come.”
The drivers mostly ignored Nathan while he was standing on Avenue L. One made the sign of the cross as she passed through the intersection.
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Tavo, as his friends knew him, was a kid who always tried cheering people up, Nathan said. But he was tough too, and they used to play fight whenever they’d get together.
“I knew we were gonna do something like this,” Nathan said. “I wanted to help out the family with the funeral costs.”
As the day progressed, friends came by to help, and tried promoting the effort on Facebook. Someone brought chairs and another hose, and another person came by with extension cords and a speaker.
By late afternoon, there was music and a microphone, a volunteer imploring passing cars through a loud speaker to stop by for the carwash.
When a silver minivan pulled in Nathan ran back to the lot to help out, then another car. The last pulled away and the kids went back to their posts, trying to guide people toward the parking lot.