By Dan Klepal and Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

A mother leads her children past a pair of firefighter's gloves at the scene of the wreck where Marquez Smith, 14, was killed and a second teen was injured when they hit the building (left) at 35 E. Clifton Ave. during a police chase Monday night. The Enquirer/Glenn Hartong

Marquez Smith was a happy 14-year-old who recently started hanging out with the wrong crowd, a family member said a day after a police chase left him dead.

Police said Marquez and another 14-year-old stole a car from a gas station in Clifton Heights and led officers on a brief but high-speed chase through three Cincinnati neighborhoods Monday. The chase ended in Over-the-Rhine when the car Marquez was driving crashed into a vacant building at 35 E. Clifton Avenue just before 10 p.m. He was dead at the scene.

His passenger, Aaron Gilden, 14, was taken to Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center where he was in serious condition Tuesday. Aaron's family declined to be interviewed.

"Marquez was a good child," said his grandmother, Gloria Smith, as she stood outside of the family's Van Antwerp Place apartment building. "He went to school; he worked cleaning up in my brother's barbershop.''

Marquez was a seventh-grader at Burton School in Avondale.

"He just got turned around and started hanging out with the wrong guys,'' she said.

Marquez Smith

Tyler Betts, 19, said he pulled into the Shell station at 205 Calhoun St. just before 10 p.m. to buy a pack of cigarettes. He jumped out of his mother's car, left it running and ran into the store.

The next thing he knew, he said Tuesday, he saw the car pulling away. "I couldn't have been there maybe a minute," Betts said.

Undercover officers were in the area staking out an ATM for three people wanted in a series of robberies around the University of Cincinnati over the past two weeks. Officers Eric Karaguleff and Kristen Shircliff saw two teens jump into the car, and called for a marked cruiser to pull them over.

Instead of pulling over, though, the stolen car sped up and reached speeds of about 70 mph. Officers found a sawed-off shotgun under the front seat.

Police were continuing their investigation, which includes trying to determine who owned the gun. Betts said the gun was "absolutely not" his.

Smith said it didn't belong to her grandson, either.

Deonte Freeman, 15, said he'll remember his brother for his love of rap music and for creating a language that was difficult for anyone other than his siblings to understand.

"I can't even believe he's dead yet," Deonte said, adding that he thinks police are at least partially to blame for his brother's death.

Cincinnati police policy says officers must consider the seriousness of the offense as well as road conditions and traffic before deciding to start a chase. Officers must turn on video and audio recorders in their patrol cars and cannot try to stop a car by boxing it in, ramming it or driving alongside it.

The number of pursuits in Cincinnati has been on the rise over the past two years - 259 last year, up from 203 in 2002 and 182 in 2001.

E-mail dklepal@enquirer.com and jprendergast@enquirer.com