The last time Latayja Davis saw her father alive, they were working security together at the Warfield Theatre. He had asked her to help him that night.
She remembered gunshots, and a frantic search for him in the crowd. When she reached him, he told her he’d been shot in the back. She tried to hold his hand, but people pulled her away. “They didn’t want to let me see him like that,” she said, as she struggled to hold back tears.
On Tuesday evening she was back in the spot where he had been fatally wounded, surrounded by some 40 friends and relatives, each carrying a candle for a man they had known fondly as Bear.
Ulysses Tykee Davis, 47, a father of six, was fatally shot early Oct. 3 while working security at the Warfield. A woman has since been charged with his murder. The incident followed a chaotic night at the theater that witnesses said included a stampede of audience members fleeing a chemical irritant that had been sprayed in the theater. Later, gunfire erupted.
But those gathered outside the theater Tuesday wanted to recall more than the circumstances of his death.
“Let us remember who he was, how he loved his family, and how he loved every single one of us,” said his brother-in-law, Terrance Cooper, addressing the crowd. “There wasn’t a time that we called him, on any day, at any time of life, when he would not be there.”
The nickname Bear dated back to when Davis was a toddler, clambering up furniture, television consoles and anything else he could climb. His grandfather gave him the name, Cooper recalled, and it stuck.
As a boy, he was happiest outdoors. His sister, who asked not to be named to protect her privacy, remembered finding him perched high in a tree, content to sit and watch the world below. He would catch bumblebees in mason jars, study them, then release them before they died.
He carried that love of nature into adulthood, taking his own children camping, Cooper told Mission Local.
Davis grew up in the Hunters Point housing projects, where he was also known as “Knowledge,” according to Raemo, a childhood friend who declined to give his last name.
“He had the facts to anything,” Raemo said. “You could ask him something, look up his answer later, and he’d be right.”
The two had been friends since they were 9 years old, playing football and riding BMX bikes around the neighborhood.
“The projects were a rough place to be as a kid,” Raemo said. “Bear helped me get out of the house.”
Now, he is struggling to comprehend the loss. “He was my oldest friend in the world.”
Relatives recalled Davis’ infectious laugh — deep and loud, almost a yell — and his ability to bring people together. His cousin Sharee Bushnell remembered running up and down the hills of Bayview-Hunters Point with him as children, laughing and playing.
His niece, Kinu Cooper, said she last remembered painting alongside him as he sang one of his favorite songs, “Wanna Be Loved,” by reggae singer Buju Banton.
“He was a calm person,” she said.
Friends and relatives also spoke of a man who had worked hard to change the course of his life. They alluded to a difficult past, but avoided dredging up details.
“I’m here because of the person he became,” said Charmaine Gallon, a family friend, who had traveled from Sacramento. “He turned his life all the way around.”
Every Thanksgiving, Cooper said, Davis and his family would use their own money to feed unhoused people in downtown San Francisco, handing out hot meals and soup.
“He was being a productive member of society, teaching his children to do the same thing,” Cooper said.
For family friend Jaymo Mohammed, the circumstances of Davis’ death made the loss especially bitter.
“What makes me really sad,” Mohammed said, was that Davis had worked to distance himself from “stereotypes” attached to people who grew up in his neighborhood — only to be killed at his job.
“He was working, off the streets,” Mohammed said, “and still something like this happened to him.”
Davis’ daughter Justice Davis, 22, described the news of his death as nearly impossible to believe.
“He went through so much but he always had our backs,” she told the assembled mourners. “Rest in peace, Dad.”
As the vigil drew to a close, mourners placed their candles on the pavement in the shape of a B. They took turns signing the back of a memorial poster.
“Love you poppa bear,” one message read. “King Bear 4 life,” read another.
