Kristjan Ndoj was, by all accounts, the perfect example of what a 15-year-old boy should be.
Intelligent, inquisitive, and respectful of his elders, he lit up every room he entered and was always helping out others in any way he could.
Which is why it’s so difficult to make sense of how and why, on a Saturday night less than two weeks ago, Ndoj was shot on Shelton’s Agawam Trail while with a friend. He died March 20 despite doctors’ efforts to save his life.
More than 300 mourners — including family members who had traveled from as far away as Kristjan’s native Albania, and dozens of his Shelton High School classmates — packed Shelton’s St. Joseph Church Thursday to remember his life and try to understand how it was cut short so senselessly.
“We feel so bad here in Shelton that a boy, a young man who stood out as being remarkable in any culture, in any language, we could not protect him from the violence and the evil that is rampant everywhere,” Monsignor Christopher Walsh told mourners during a Mass of Christian Burial honoring Kristjan. “There is no safe place anymore.”
As investigators from law enforcement agencies across the state continue a tight-lipped investigation of the case, those gathered Thursday chose to remember Kristjan for all the good he brought to those around him, and urged each other to keep his memory alive by following his example.
Stories of his kind nature abounded at the service, which began and ended with renditions of “Amazing Grace,” a hymn that reflected his personality.
He would never leave home for school in the morning without first getting a peck on the cheek from his grandmother.
He went out of his way to make fellow immigrants adapt and feel at home, helping them to learn English or offering advice.
He asked his father for advice on how to impress girls — and told that he should compliment them, often told them how beautiful they looked.
He was constantly telling his parents that he knew how hard they had worked to support him and his brother, and that in a few years, he would go through college, get a good job, and support them in turn.
In short, Walsh said, quoting Kristjan’s father, Fran, “He was in the blooming time of life.”
“And we saw that,” Walsh said. “We saw not the boy from Lac, but the teenager from Shelton, a young man who really did stand out in so many ways.”
“I think that’s what pains us the most, and certainly for us in Shelton who are his adopted home, we feel so incredibly strongly, we have such a broken heart,” Walsh said.
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Walsh related a story of his own about Kristjan — the boy appeared in the church one night with his mother and grandmother, translating on their behalf, to ask another pastor to talk about services and agencies in the area.
The priest spoke to Kristjan, “incredibly amazed” at how organized the teen’s thoughts were, and then got a phone call from him months later thanking him and relating how things had worked out for the family.
“Fifteen-year-old kids don’t do that these days,” Walsh said. “I’ve got to tell you, 50-year-old people don’t do that these days. People are not kind and thankful and appreciative in this society as they should be.”
Walsh said that on the night he was shot Kristjan’s grandmother suggested he should stay at his home. But typical of his kindness, Kristjan said that he had to go help another family who had just arrived in the country.
“We cannot comprehend the depth of your grief,” Walsh told Kristjan’s family. “But we do want to say … what a truly remarkable young man you raised. And yes, his life was so much shorter than we would have wanted, but we do have to trust that somehow God did not will this evil to happen.”
“If it was not God’s will to work a miracle and raise him from the dead in this life, he’s working, we trust and pray, the miracle that is so much more beneficial. He’s raising Kristjan to new life with himself.”
Earlier, Beth Smith, the headmaster at Shelton High School, where Kristjan was a sophomore, read a passage from the Book of Wisdom about those who die young.
“The just man, though he die early, shall be at rest,” Smith read. “For the age that is honorable comes not from the passing of time, nor can be measured in terms of years … He who pleased God was loved, he who lived among sinners was transported — snatched away, lest wickedness pervert his mind or deceit beguile his soul.”
One of Kristjan’s cousins offered a reading in Albanian before Rev. Peter Popaj, pastor of Our Lady of Shkodra church in Hartsdale, NY, gave a homily in Albanian with a similar message.
After the service he said he repeatedly used the words “Don’t cry” in Kristjan’s native language to show that “with hopes and prayers, the situation will change.”
“It’s like when a mother in the middle of the night goes to a child and says ‘Don’t cry, I’m here’,” Popaj said. “God is present, too … We just have to have faith.”
Smith eulogized Kristjan by urging others to follow his example.
“This has been a tragedy that none of us can explain or understand,” Smith said.
“We need to keep his memory alive by being as compassionate as he was,” she went on. “We need to continue the acts of kindness that he would have done … It is up to us to keep his memory alive in our hearts and in our actions.”
No arrests have been made in Kristjan’s killing. Police have asked that anyone with information about the crime to call them at 203 924 1544.
