“Hey, Moe! Hey, Larry! Yuk, yuk, yuk!” Curly says on TV before falling down.

A child’s laughter at his favorite TV show characters fades into a distant echo as the screen grows dim.

The memory is over.

“He was one of the most loving, sweetest boys. Smiling all of the time,” Noma Rudisell says. “Everybody loved him. He would go up to everyone in church and hug them and tell them he loved them.”

Rudisell said her great-grandson, Jason, loved the Three Stooges as much as hugging people. He used to sit on her floor with his sippy cup full of milk and some chocolate chip cookies watching the comedy classics, rolling with laughter.

In fact, he used a sippy cup so when he did get to laughing, he wouldn’t mess up Grandma’s floor.

But the laughter of a child ended April 12, when he was shot and killed at a Calhoun County residence.

Jason had celebrated his 11th birthday just three weeks earlier. A 12-year-old youth in the home was later charged as a juvenile with murder.

Jason’s relatives are trying to cope with life without a little hug from the child who loved people. No one was immune -- relatives, friends, church members. Even strangers.

“You’d have to walk fast, because he’d walk over and hug you,” Noma said.

If he wasn’t watching the Three Stooges, Jason played his DVD of “Home Alone,” one of his favorite movies, she said.

It may have been from the movie’s main character, Kevin McCallister, that Jason picked up his mischievous smile. It usually meant you had suddenly been short-listed to be ambushed with a hug, Noma said.

“Everybody got a hug,” his grandfather, Butch Rudisell said. “He’d go by and hug his teachers (at school), his Sunday School teachers. Didn’t matter who you were.”

His family says Jason’s compassion for people spilled over into his affection for animals. Jason wasn’t a hunter. He didn’t even want to watch a movie that showed someone injured or an animal being hurt.

Inside he was all boy, though. If he wasn’t riding a four-wheeler, he was working on one with his dad, Rusty Rudisell. Jason wanted to one day race dirt bikes.

Rusty and Jason would go to the local race tracks near their hometown of Hartsville. Rusty said his son loved a fast car, particularly a Camaro.

The two grew as close as a father and son could. They’d tinker on cars, fiddle with dirt bikes. If Rusty managed a project by himself, Jason would find a project that he could put his own screwdriver or wrench to.

“He just loved his daddy,” says Lisa Thomas, Jason’s great-aunt. “He really loved his daddy.”

Father and son faced a difficult time last year.

Jason’s mom, Crystal, had become critically ill. In addition to a full-time job at the city public works department, Rusty was taking care of a wife and a growing son. It became difficult to manage.

A fateful decision was made. Jason was sent to Calhoun County where relatives had offered to take him in until things got better, until Crystal could recover.

But she never did.

At the age of 26, Crystal Rudisell passed away after an extended illness, leaving Jason without a mother, Rusty without his wife. The tragedy would leave Jason in Calhoun County to give his father a chance to heal.

Then came Easter Sunday – a happy time, a time for hugs.

The police reports say the boys were either arguing or horsing around that night.

Investigators said in a hearing two days after the shooting that a 12-year-old in the home said it was horseplay. Jason picked up a wrench while the youth retrieved a shotgun, investigators say.

Jason put the wrench down. Police say the youth didn’t put down the shotgun.

“Jason picked up a picture and said, ‘My daddy will protect me.’ It was a picture of his daddy,” Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office investigator Riley Godwin said. “And that’s when the shot was fired.”

Having sustained a shotgun blast to the head, Jason was rushed the 50 or more miles to Columbia’s Palmetto Health Richland.

Doctors did what they could. But the 11-year-old with a love for animals and cookies and milk was dead.

The 12-year-old is awaiting his trial.

Asked why Jason would hide behind a picture of his father when confronted with a shotgun, Rusty said his son knew he was safe with him.

“He really looked up to me,” Rusty Rudisell said softly through tear-rimmed eyes. “A lot of things I wish I’d of done differently. But he looked up to me.”

Noma, Rusty and Butch Rudisell and Lisa Thomas visited the ball field in Cameron Tuesday where Jason played on the Little League team, the Cameron Colts.

The family wandered the field’s edge not far from where Jason played center field. A large white number three – Jason’s number – is painted beside the third base line in memory of the child who not long ago ran and played just feet away.

“He was really fast, like a little rabbit. Fastest one on the team,” said Bill Spiers, Colts coach and former major leaguer. “He was something special, really a pleasure to work with.”

For a few minutes, if only in their hearts, Jason’s family watched once again as No. 3 rounded the bases, chased a grounder, cheered his teammates. They waited at home plate for the hugs that would no longer come.

“He had so much to live for. He wanted to be a veterinarian,” Noma said. “People just loved him. And he loved them.”

T&D Staff Writer Richard Walker can be reached by e-mail at rwalker@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5516. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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