'They Killed Me Too': Mother Asks For Help In Wayli Gonzalez's Funeral

DENVER (CBS4) – The mother of a teenager who was stabbed to death at a 7-Eleven is pleading with the public for help finding her son's killer and for financial assistance to bury him in her native homeland. Orvelina Gonzalez told CBS4 her son Wayli, 15, was the teenager who was killed on New Year's Day.

"(Learning he died) was like they killed me too," Gonzalez told CBS4's Dillon Thomas through an interpreter. "My kids are everything for me."

Gonzalez, 34, said her son told her he was going to the park with some friends. After he failed to return home by 10:30 she attempted to call him without success. She wasn't aware he had been killed until a friend of Wayli's called her, and said she needed to come to the 7-Eleven at Jewell and Sheridan Boulevard.

"When I saw all the police and the yellow (crime scene tape,) I started worrying," Gonzalez said. "The detective told me that he was sorry for the thing he was going to tell me. My son was pronounced dead."

Gonzalez said Denver Police still have not given her much information on the case. She said Wayli's friends told one story, while witnesses at the scene had other stories. Denver Police told CBS4 a suspect, or suspects, still had not been identified.

Gonzalez told CBS4 she was told her son and his friends were approached by some men while refueling their car. She said a fight broke out, and the rest was not clear.

Gonzalez said her home is quiet now without her son coming and going. She said she still sometimes thinks he is simply in the shower, or out in the parking lot, and will return at any moment.

"I cannot think. All the time I am hearing his voice inside of my mind," Gonzalez said. "I've cried a lot. Sometimes I have the feeling he will knock on the door. I feel him all the time here in the house."

Gonzalez said she couldn't think of a person who did not like Wayli. She said he was a member of his high school's ROTC program, and was recently baptized. She said he read his Bible every day.

"He always was a very respectful kid, a very honest kid. He was good, everybody admired him," she said. "Why did they kill him? Why so much hatred? What did he do for him to deserve the death?"

Gonzalez said she planned to bury Wayli in Guatemala, where many of his family members still live. She said paying for the casket, the travel and the burial was costly. The community set up a GoFundMe account for her, hoping to raise $10,000 for expenses.

As she prepared to bury her child, Gonzalez said she is saddened to only have Wayli's possessions left to hold on to. As she sniffed the shirts he used to wear, she said she is constantly reminded of his presence, and the void he will leave behind.

"The smell of (the clothes) reminds me of him all the time," Gonzalez said. "I ask (the suspects) to repent, and ask for forgiveness to the Lord."