Cedric Mahaffey was on a mission.
The 29-year-old Birmingham husband and father, known by many for his grill business – Golds by Ced – wanted to give young men and women in the inner city hope for better life and he wanted to help break the cycle that leads to violence.
“Ced’s mission was to offer the demographic he sold the golds to a way out of the situation many of these young men and ladies find themselves in,’’ said his pastor, the Rev. Alton Hardy, founder of Urban Hope Community Church in Fairfield.
“He was a Christian,’’ Hardy said. “We had been praying that God would really use Ced to galvanize getting young men into church.”
Mahaffey’s mission was cut short Saturday night when he was shot to death in a vacant home in southwest Birmingham.
Officers from the city’s West Precinct responded at 8:42 p.m. Saturday to a Shot Spotter alert of one round fired in the 500 block of Francis Place S.W.
Once on the scene, police were directed to an unresponsive person in the front room of a house, said Lt. Rod Mauldin.
Mahaffey had sustained a gunshot wound. Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service pronounced him dead on the scene.
Mauldin said a single gunshot was heard prior to the discovered of the victim.
Authorities have not released a motive in the slaying, but his friends and family believe he was likely set up to be robbed.
It was not uncommon for Mahaffey to go to his customers to take molds for their grills or deliver the final product.
“None of us know that,’’ Hardy said, “but he was known to do that all of the time.”
Mahaffey graduated from Wenonah High School and then attended Alabama State University, eventually going into the family business. He leaves behind his wife, Santana, and three children.
“He loved his wife, loved his children, loved his family,’’ Hardy said. “He was fighting hard for his family.”
“He was on a 30-day fast when this murder took place, praying for his family,’’ Hardy said. “I met with him on Thursday for about three hours at Purple Onion. We just shared and talked about what it means to be a good husband.”
“He was just so humble,’’ he said. “One of my staff members met with him every morning for prayer. He was so loved, and he was so excited about what God was doing in his life.”
Mahaffey was spiritual and a deep-thinker. Hardy had known him for about 10 years, and Mahaffey was active in Urban Hope.
“He and his wife were the first couple we married in the building,’’ Hardy said. “They had been together about eight or nine years, but they just married last year.”
“He grew up in kind of a broken family, so he wanted to break the cycle. That’s some of what I teach in the church,’’ Hardy said. “I’ve been doing urban ministry for almost 30 years. If you do a study on the victim and the perpetrators, the common denominator is fatherlessness. The stats don’t lie.”
“I would guarantee you the young kids that pulled that trigger last night were some young fatherless boys,’’ he said. “Ced saw that, and he was speaking out on that.”
Mahaffey, followed by more than 7,000 people on Facebook, often posted scripture, and important life messages about family, marriage, and parenting.
“Because of the Golds by Ced, he knew a lot of people,’’ Hardy said. “He was the light in a room.”
“He just wanted to break cycle,’’ he said. “I was looking for him to get all of these young men he was selling the golds to come to our church so we could get at some of this violence, this stuff that’s happening in our community.”
“We’ve lost so many young men to gun violence since I’ve been here. It’s just a regular occurrence but this is the first time it has actually been a member of our church,’’ Hardy said.
“The church is obviously taking it hard. This is why Urban Hope was actually planted, to reach the 17 to 35-year-old African American males. That’s the heart of our church and what we’re trying to do.”
“I never saw this one coming,’’ he said. “He was a big influence at our church. I literally saw Ced 10 or 15 years from now being on staff and being a part of our church team. We want to plant Urban Hope churches all over the city of Birmingham.”
“We’ve got a lot of young men – probably doing the best that any church is doing getting them in,’’ Hardy said. “We saw him playing a part of that, and now he’s gone.”
Mahaffey, Hardy said, was not ashamed of his Christianity.
“To the guys he was selling the golds to, he would offer them the hope of who Jesus was,’’ he said. “He kept a good balance being able to maintain the swagger of the culture, if you want to call it that, but at the same time maintain his Christian conviction in it and people respected him for it. That is what was beautiful about him.”
“And I think given time, he and his wife singlehandedly would have probably influenced multiple, hundreds of young men and women into the kingdom of God through Urban Hope church,’’ Hardy said.
“He would have definitely been a pastor in the hardcore of the urban city by the time he was 40,” he said. “I just hope his death wasn’t in vain.”
Anyone with information on Mahaffey’s death is asked to call Birmingham homicide detectives at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.
