Last Thursday, Georgia high school student De’nise Turner proudly posed for a photo beside a young man clad in a suit. Between them, they held up a very large novelty check for $2,500. On the bottom left corner of the check, the donor, Adin Wigfall, had scrawled, “The Saga Continues.”
Turner was the recipient of a $2,500 scholarship created in the name of two of Wigfall’s cousins: Cornelius Wigfall Jr. and Christopher Bowen. Both Wigfall Jr. and Bowen were shot and killed in their vehicles just two years apart.
Wigfall Jr., 44, who also went by the nickname “Saga,” was killed in February at the Potrero Hill Terrace and Annex, a public housing project currently undergoing redevelopment. Bowen, 18, was killed in 2023 on St. Helena Island in South Carolina.
The Wigfall family, which is spread across San Francisco’s Potrero Hill and Bayview neighborhoods, South Carolina, and Georgia, were left to mourn their loss. Adin Wigfall, 20, an aspiring real estate investor, was left without two cousins. He created the scholarship in their honor.
Wigfall Jr. left behind his father, children, and grandchildren after someone sprayed bullets into the passenger window of a car parked outside Potrero Hill Terrace and Annex, killing him instantly and injuring two others in the car. The San Francisco Police Department has not yet named a suspect.
Though gun violence at the apartment complex has rapidly declined in recent years, Wigfall Jr.’s death on Feb. 27 marked the eighth homicide in San Francisco so far this year, a steep increase from the three recorded homicides by February of last year.
SFPD has not confirmed whether Wigfall Jr.’s death was gang-related, though friends and family members of Wigfall Jr., who had a criminal record of gang-related activity, expressed concern that his killing was a targeted attack.
“He was trying to change and trying to be there for his grandkids,” said Adin, who remembered Wigfall Jr. encouraging him to continue his education and steering him away from trouble.
His cousin, he said, lent him an early self-help book when Adin was young, titled “A Man Thinketh,” which argues that one’s thoughts shape one’s life and environment. “We would have deep philosophical conversations about that,” said Adin. “My cousins always encouraged me to do what I’m doing. Anytime [Wigfall Jr.] thought I was entertaining that lifestyle he snapped at me.”
The scholarship, said Adin, is intended for low-income students of Gullah Geechee descent, an African American ethnic group descended from enslaved Central and West Africans, to which his family has cultural ties.
Cornelius Wigfall Jr., he said, had received a scholarship for band while he was in school prior to his incarceration at San Quentin State Prison in the early 2000s.
“My cousins were multifaceted people,” said Adin. “I would rather their legacy be something of positivity.”