Vigil held to remember Kalief Browder

NEW YORK (WABC) -- The family of Kalief Browder spoke for the first time Thursday night, about the young man's suicide last weekend.

Browder, 22, spent three years at Rikers jail for shoplifting. He was never tried, never found guilty. Just held as a teenager in jail for three years.

His brother spoke out at a rally calling for change.

Beaten and tormented for years at Rikers Island for a crime he didn't commit, Kalief was constantly plagued by the large piece of his life he lost behind bars.

"I didn't get to go to prom, graduation, nothing, those are the main years, I'm never going to get those years back," Browder had said back in 2013.

He spoke with Eyewitness News shortly after he was exonerated of allegedly stealing a backpack when he was 16.

"No apology, no nothing, they just said, 'Oh case dismissed, don't worry about nothing.' What do you mean don't worry about nothing, you all just took over three years of my life," Browder said.

Sadly just days ago, he took his own life.

"A man who was psychologically killed by the system," a woman said.

"Kalief Browder began to die the day that he was arrested at 16," another speaker at the vigil said.

At a vigil in Lower Manhattan Thursday, community organizers along with Kalief's older brother made pleas for his death to not be in vain.

"He didn't deserve this to happen to him," Kalief's brother said. "Three years of incarceration to keep on saying that he's not guilty, to keep on professing his innocence until the last day, and they just let him go,"

Meanwhile, Justice League NYC is now calling on the mayor to let out 200 kids, minors being detained right now at Rikers, while Albany works on the Raise the Age Bill.

"We need reform and we need justice, but in a way that reprimands those officers who did this to my brother," his brother said.