Father says 20-year-old son killed in Everett shooting was ‘most gentle, soft-spoken, respectful man’

The father of 20-year-old Craig McDonald, Jr., who was killed in a shooting in Everett on Friday night, is remembering him as a gentle soul.

Investigators say Everett police responded to shots fired near 2nd and Revere streets around 8 p.m. that night.

According to the Middlesex Country District Attorney’s office, officers also responded to The Whidden Memorial Hospital soon after for a report of a gunshot victim, a man, who was later pronounced dead.

Craig McDonald, Sr., of Randolph, told WBZ the man killed was his son.

The junior McDonald, who his father called CJ, was in Everett with two friends to take in a high school football game that night, McDonald said.

The trio was in CJ’s car when a person approached it and opened fire on the vehicle, he told the news station.

CJ’s friends called him, brought CJ into the back of the car, and drove to the hospital, his father said.

There, McDonald was told his son suffered cardiac arrest twice and lost too much blood to be saved, he said.

“He was the most gentle, soft-spoken, respectful man that I’ve ever met,” McDonald told WBZ.

He said he believes the perpetrator of the shooting knew one of the other people in CJ’s car.

McDonald saw his son the day before, and said he “came home his normal self.”

“He told us that he would be back,” he said. “There’s always a side of getting to justice, but you always want, more than that, him to be here, him to be back.”

The investigation is ongoing, prosecutors said.

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