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Grieving Mother Speaks Out About Her Son's Murder

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- A promising young Baltimore athlete met a violent end, stabbed as he tried to help his sister outside the family's home.

Mike Hellgren has more on the chilling crime and has the first public comments from the victim's mother.

Seventeen-year-old Ronnie Gibbs -- nicknamed "The Rock"---was one of the top young boxers in the world, but his Olympic dreams were shattered when he was stabbed to death outside his home in Park Heights.

"It's hard," said his mother, Charmaine Smith.

Smith has yet to come to grips with her son's violent end.  Police say Terrance Sims killed him.  According to police, Sims was fighting with Gibbs' sister and he was defending her when he was killed.

Sims served only five years in jail for killing another man outside a club 11 years ago.

"Should he have been on the streets, killing somebody else?" said his sister, Kiara Karim.

"There's a quote in the Bible that what greater is your love when you lay down your life for your brother or your sister, so he's a hero to our neighborhood.  He'll never be forgotten," said Dorothy O'Bannon, neighbor.

Gibbs was a mentor and a hard worker, always at the gym, training to be an Olympian.  His family has criticized the initial police response, saying they were made to leave his side.

"Me and his father were talking to him, telling him, `Stay with us, stay with us Ronnie.  You for the Olympics, you got the Olympics,'" said Corey Winfield, family friend. "No one was working on him.  He laid right there for approximately four or five minutes before the ambulance arrived."

Right now, his accused killer sits in jail and Gibbs' loved ones are left to make sense of the senseless.

"He didn't have to die.  He was defending his sister," Smith said.

Gibbs' sister was also stabbed in the fight.  She was treated and released from the hospital.

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