‘People were really captivated by him’: Educators, coach remember Northwest High student

The 16-year-old Wichita boy police say was fatally shot by his mother this week was a gifted artist who liked playing basketball.

He was also known in his art class as the jokester.

Robert Florence was shot on Wednesday morning at his 46-year-old mother’s apartment in east Wichita. He died Friday morning. His mother, who has yet to be charged, remains in Sedgwick County Jail.

“He was definitely a guy that tried to make others laugh and keep it light-hearted,” said Northwest High School basketball coach Andy Hill.

Florence was a junior. He played basketball his freshman year and planned to try out for basketball again this year, Hill said, adding that Florence’s older brother also played basketball.

He “had a good heart and was trying to better himself, just a sad thing,” Hill said.

A GoFundMe set up by family to help with funeral expenses says Florence was a “cherished son, sibling, and friend, who touched the lives of so many with his kindness, humor, and generous spirit.”

Florence signed up to take Sunny Overholt’s printmaking art class all three years Florence had been at Northwest. In the hallway on Tuesday morning, Florence tried to show Overholt some sketches he had done. She insisted he not be late for class and that he could show her during art class the next day, but he never came to class.

“I haven’t had a student that would get so hyper focused on their work the way he would,” she said. “Once he sat down and started working at a piece of art it was almost hard for him to stop and clean up at the end of the day.”

He was always smiling, too.

“People were really captivated by him and thought he was really funny,” she said, adding he was definitely the classroom jokester and that one girl kept a notebook where she wrote down funny Florence quotes. ”I think his personality came through in his artwork. … He had a really playful spirit, loved to play games and joke around with his friends.”

Last year, he had to do a self-portrait but couldn’t capture a picture of himself that he wanted to draw off of. Overholt said she took about 30 photos of him on her phone; one of them she turned into a drypoint etching on Friday.

In one of the pictures she took, a friend jumped in and stuck out his tongue.

“The best way I can describe him is as a ball in pong, always bouncing around,” Jennifer Enright said in a message. Enright had Florence in her English class last school year. “He never took anything too seriously and brought levity into the room with him. I think his peers probably didn’t realize it because of how goofy he was, but he had depth, and was quite smart and capable. It was rare to see him without a contagious smile.”

The GoFundMe can be found at shorturl.at/UOp6t .

This is the second Northwest student reportedly killed by their mother in a shooting this year. Kylee Renee Hodges was sentenced in July to at least 25 years in prison before she’s eligible for parole in the killing of 14-year-old Claude Hodges Jr.

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