Police say Randy German, who died early Tuesday, was shot in the hallway of this house at 527 Cranston St. in Providence.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

PROVIDENCE –– Three white candles in a cardboard box outside a rundown tenement in the West End marked where a young man was fatally shot late Monday night.

The memorial was a bleak contrast to the life of 20-year-old Randy German, whose relatives and friends gathered to mourn him in his family’s apartment on the South Side, where a framed picture of German in his graduation cap and gown sat on a side table.

“He was a good kid,” said an aunt, Lina Leonor.

German graduated from the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center in 2007 and was studying business administration at the Community College of Rhode Island, his family said. “He was a nice young man,” said Cedric Huntley, an administrator at the Met School. “He was well-liked by all his peers.”

What drew German to the vacant floors of the tenement on Monday night was something the police are still investigating. Just before 11:30 p.m., downstairs tenants at the faded red tenement at 527 Cranston St. heard a disturbance and then footsteps rushing down the hallway stairs, said Maj. Thomas F. Oates III. German was in the hallway when he was shot in the back, the police said.

He made it outside, across Cranston Street, to the edge of a parking lot between the J&C Electronic Sound store and the Lalin Coin Laundromat. He was pronounced dead at Rhode Island Hospital.

German’s slaying was the ninth homicide in the city this year, Oates said. Barely two weeks ago, German had told the police that two teenagers on bicycles tried to rob him at gunpoint while he was parked outside his family’s apartment, on Rugby Street. German said he was sitting in the car late on June 25 when one of the boys yanked open his door, pointed a gun in his face and ordered: Give me everything you got.

German told the police that he fought back. As German tried to get away, he heard the gun go off. The boys fled, one leaving his bicycle behind.

On Tuesday afternoon, as plainclothes detectives looked around the empty third-floor apartment, and more police officers watched outside, two neighbor women below chatted about the trouble. The hallway, where German was shot, was shabby, the walls smashed in some places, with graffiti “D-Block” written along one. The second-floor apartments were wide open and vacant. The police say the top section was used as a party house.

One neighbor said she saw German’s family gather outside the porch and leave the candles for him. His family said the Met School would host a ceremony for German’s friends on Wednesday at noon.

German was killed the day after a mother of two was found beaten to death in her home in Silver Lake. On Sunday afternoon, Ingrid Gonzalez, 34, was found dead of apparent head injuries; her boyfriend, Johnny Tineo, was arrested in New York and charged with her murder.

amilkovi@projo.com