North Raleigh Today

Nathaniel Price fought the good fight for a few weeks, but it just wasn't enough to overcome what has since become a fatal beating that left him lying on a street in Raleigh near a bus stop.

Raleigh EMS personnel found him lying on the ground beside a bus stop on New Bern Ave. near Trawick Road in the early hours of Feb. 24, a recent report from WTVD said. 

"We were driving on the strip of New Bern, and there's a man laid out on the floor," the driver told a 911 operator in a recorded phone call recently released by the Raleigh Police Department, quoted in the report. "He has blood coming out of his head and he's just laying there. I don't know if he's dead."

"He was swollen, his eye, he lost one of his eyes, and they did the surgery... really bad shape," Jerry Price, the victim's younger brother, told WTVD. Price said his brother was repeatedly beaten in the head with an object; he was unconscious and had suffered brain damage.

The family recently made the difficult decision to take Nathaniel off life support.

"It was heartbreaking," Jerry Price said.

Another sibling, David Price, expounded on the event's lasting effects on the family. 

"I can't get it out of my mind," he told WTVD. "Every time I come by here and see this bus stop, I have to look over here because I know he got killed right here."

In the more immediate aftermath, family members made hundreds of fliers that have been posted across the city, the report said. They shared their story, urging any possible eyewitnesses to call police and provide information about the assault. Anyone with any information—even information that might not seem significant—is asked to contact Raleigh CrimeStoppers at (919) 834-HELP or online at raleighcrimestoppers.org.

Jerry Price said the emotional toll goes beyond the immediate family.

"Everybody knows him, and the first thing they said out of their mouth is 'He don't bother nobody,' so with that being said, the whole community is hurting," Jerry Price said.