14-year-old gunned down had looked forward to high school, becoming a welder, relatives say
Fourteen-year-old Malachi Sicka gathered with family and friends for a barbecue on July 24.
He was the life of his stepmother’s 33rd birthday party, said his grandmother, Rachel Mejia.
“He was happy and joking around with everybody,” Mejia said. “He was in good spirits.”
At 9:45 p.m., Sicka left his grandmother’s house to meet a friend at a nearby park.
“He said ‘I love you grandma’ and I said too ‘I love you too’,“ Mejia said. “Then he walked away.”
Mejia’s house is about a block away from Skyline Park in a neighborhood near downtown Wichita. At about 10 p.m., Mejia called her grandson to ask what friend he was going to meet.
“He answered the phone and said ‘Grandma, grandma,’ “ Mejia said. “The phone went dead and went straight to voicemail after that.”
Wichita police responded to a call around 10:12 p.m. in the 600 block of S. Laura near downtown Wichita. Officers found Sicka fatally shot in the 1100 block of E. Orme, directly across the street from Skyline Park.
On Friday, police arrested three teenage boys from Wichita on suspicion of first-degree murder, aggravated robbery and criminal use of a weapon in connection with Sicka’s death, police spokesperson Kristopher Gupilan said.
The police blotter indicates that someone else was shot, but police have provided no details about that.
Police had not responded to additional questions about the shooting as of Monday afternoon.
‘Getting by day by day’
Sicka’s stepmother, Amber Hatfield, recalled her last conversation with him. She told him to be back home by 11 after he left for the park at 10.
She saw police near the house around 11 p.m.
“I’m the one who went up there because we hadn’t heard from Malachi,” Hatfield said. “I don’t know ... something inside of me told me that I needed to go up and ask a question.
Hatfield told an Eagle reporter that she identified Sicka’s body around 11:20 p.m.
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Hatfield, who came into Sicka’s life when he was 10, said the family is “getting by day by day” after his death.
“It’s quiet, it’s sad, it’s depressing,” Hatfield said. “We had a good relationship and I was the closest thing he had to a mom.”
The two would often skate, go to the arcade or the YMCA, and take their dog, a Rottweiler named Pablo, on walks.
“We did everything,” Hatfield said. “There was no step in front of mom. It was just mom.”
Sicka had attended Hamilton and Allison middle schools, but was being home schooled for his final year before heading off to East High. He aspired to become a welder after graduating.
“His dad used to do welding and worked in bridges and stuff like that,” Hatfield said. “And I think he’s always just been interested in doing that.”
Sicka also spent a good amount of time at his grandmother’s house, where she said that he enjoyed playing sports, video games and rapping.
Mejia recalled a memory from 2018 where she and his great-grandmother went to go pick up Malachi from Texas, where he lived at the time with his dad. They made a vacation out of it and spent a week in South Padre Island.
“We walked the ocean, saw jellyfish and collected big buckets of seashells,” Mejia said. “He never knew you could buy fruit on the side of the road when we stopped at a stand on the way back.”
A GoFundMe has been set up to help with Sicka’s funeral expenses.
Both Hatfield and Mejia said they think Sicka was robbed.
“At this point I don’t think it was gang related,” Hatfield said. “I think these kids intentionally set him up to rob him for what he had in his pockets.”
Mejia said she asked police about Sicka’s cell phone and was told no phone was recovered at the scene.
Wichita Eagle reporter Michael Stavola contributed to this reporting.