For much of his young life, Brian T. Shaw bounced between homes in the Syracuse area, living with his mother and godparents and friends. He had a way, his friends say, of making them all feel like family.

On Friday, the Syracuse University senior pled not guilty to a charge of second-degree murder in connection with the death of the 23-year-old mother of his 4-year-old daughter. Shaw, 22, allegedly strangled the woman, Chiarra Seals, on Wednesday evening and left her body in a suitcase behind a garage on Avondale Place, near Westcott Street.

Some of Shaw’s closest childhood friends detailed his life and personality Friday afternoon, describing him as a high school role model who resisted the temptations of crime and delinquency that face many South Side youths. He grew up with them in Syracuse, and each said he called them ‘brother,’ ‘sister’ and ‘uncle.’

Tyehimea Reese has known Shaw since their days at the Huntington School, a K-8 school in the city’s Eastwood region. She said she was close friends – ‘brother and sister’ – with Shaw in middle school and high school. She still lives in Syracuse and says she has kept in close touch with Shaw over the years.

‘We were supposed to hang out this weekend,’ she said, to celebrate a mutual friend’s 21st birthday. Reese attended Friday’s arraignment and said she will try to visit Shaw in jail Saturday. Throughout their young lives, Reese, Shaw and classmate Kamar Elliott were an inseparable trio, Reese said.

Elliott now attends the State University of New York University at Albany, and said he and Shaw shared the ambition to build stable, happy lives and ‘get to the top’ in their own way.

‘He was like my brother,’ said Elliott, who was on the Henninger High School track team with Shaw and now runs track at Albany. ‘He called my mother ‘mom;’ I called his mother ‘mom.”

Shaw moved to Syracuse from New York City with his mother when he was in grade school, though his friends’ accounts vary slightly about the year he moved in. His mother left Syracuse when he was a sophomore in high school, Reese and Elliott said, and moved back to New York, where Elliott said she eventually married Shaw’s father.

Shaw’s mother, Celeste, now lives in Philadelphia. She rushed to Syracuse Thursday and attended her son’s arraignment Friday.

‘Someone lost a kid; someone lost a mom; someone lost a sister,’ said another close family friend named Terry, who asked his last name not appear in print. ‘She lost her son. I can’t imagine how anyone would react in that situation.’

Terry, who said Shaw calls him ‘Uncle T,’ lives on South State Street, and Shaw listed the address as his own in the SU student directory. Terry said his wife is very close with Shaw’s mother, so much so that they all consider each other family.

Reese said that after Shaw’s mother left Syracuse, he lived with godparents in the Cicero-North Syracuse area and later with a school counselor in Eastwood.

Shaw was so polite and neat, Elliott said, that ‘you wouldn’t even think he was staying at their place. You’d think they were staying at his place.’

Shaw excelled in high school, Terry said, and attended advanced classes through LeMoyne College. Terry said that Shaw ‘never smoked, never drank,’ and his high school friends described him as their calm, focused ‘protector.’

‘He’s never been a problem kid,’ Terry said. ‘But he’s been in situations where he could have been a problem kid.’

‘He said he doesn’t respect a man who was a drug dealer,’ Reese said. ‘He always strove not to be one of those guys.’

After high school Shaw enrolled at SU, where he majors in psychology and education. He has senior standing and is enrolled through University College, the part-time wing of the university. But Shaw, like all students charged with a violent crime, will be placed on interim suspension for the duration of his criminal case, according to SU spokesman Kevin Morrow.

‘He’s right at the finish line, and he can’t finish the race,’ Reese said.

Shaw is a brother in the Syracuse chapter of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and a member of the cheerleading squad. His fraternity released a prepared statement Thursday addressing the murder charge.

‘Brian T. Shaw has been a great friend and brother to all of us at Sigma Phi Epsilon,’ the statement said. ‘We are deeply shocked and saddened by this incident. Our hearts and prayers go out to the families of the victims.’

The fraternity’s national chapter received news of the arrest on Thursday, and its primary concern was the Syracuse chapter brothers, said Scott Thompson, director of communications for SigEp.

‘The chapter is receiving the counseling they need,’ Thompson said. ‘We made sure that was the case yesterday.’

Thompson said the national office would offer any help it could to the investigation but that it has not been contacted by the university. If Shaw is convicted, he could face expulsion from the fraternity, which occurs when a member is found to have violated the membership agreement, Thompson said.

Five SU cheerleaders declined to comment on Shaw’s case, and the coach could not be reached for comment. The education and psychology departments referred all questions to Morrow.

In his time at the university, Terry said, Shaw ‘worked hard, he cheerleaded, he studied. He did what he had to do.’

‘Once he got in there, it was like, ‘you’re on your way,” Terry said of Shaw’s acceptance to SU.

Elliott says he kept in touch with Shaw as they worked their ways through college, and Reese said she spoke to him regularly on the phone and online. But Reese said she didn’t know Shaw had fathered a child until his daughter was two years old.

‘It’s strange now,’ she said, ‘putting all those things together.’

Elliott said he never heard of a long-term relationship between Shaw and Seals, and both friends said they’d only met her briefly. They agreed that Shaw was very reserved about his personal life, rarely speaking of his father or the daughter he had with Seals.

Until the child was a year old, Elliott said, Shaw went through a series of court appearances and blood tests before it was determined that he is the father.

‘He knew what he had to do as a father,’ Elliott said, calling Shaw ‘very responsible, very mature.’ But, he added, ‘it was never really talked about.’

But a May 2004 warrant from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance indicates that Shaw owed $5,614.80 in child support.

Chiarra Seals’ children – the 4-year-old by Shaw and a 17-month-old by another man – are now safe in the custody of Seals’ family. Shaw remains in jail at the Onondaga County Justice Center.

‘It kind of seems like the end already,’ Terry said. ‘But it’s only the beginning.’

Reese said she heard of the charge against Shaw Thursday afternoon while at work as a lifeguard at the downtown YMCA. Since then she’s been fielding constant calls from friends and family, and somehow she’s taken the role of explaining it to them all.

‘It’s like every day, I’m like a tape recorder,’ she said.

At the courthouse, Reese said Shaw shook his head, looked up at her and began to cry. His surrogate sister was already in tears.

‘I’m just hoping some miraculous turnaround comes,’ Terry said. ‘To me it’s just a dream. A nightmare.’

Published on March 25, 2005 at 12:00 pm