Tony Hicks, who found forgiveness alongside the family of the teen he killed, dies at 45
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His work with the Tariq Khamisa Foundation became a nationally recognized example of restorative justice and violence prevention.
Tony Hicks, whose life became a remarkable story of accountability and redemption after he killed a teenager as a child and later devoted himself to preventing others from following his path, has died at 45.
According to PEOPLE, Hicks died on July 15, with his death confirmed by Amy and Ples Felix in a joint statement. Ples Felix is the grandfather of Tariq Khamisa, the 20-year-old pizza delivery driver Hicks fatally shot in 1995 when he was just 14. In an extraordinary turn, Felix would go on to become one of Hicks’ closest partners in advocacy work decades later.
The 1995 killing made Hicks the youngest person in California history to be sentenced to an adult prison, the outlet reported. Tariq’s father, Azim Khamisa, responded to the unimaginable loss not with a desire for retribution, but by founding the Tariq Khamisa Foundation, an organization dedicated to ending youth violence, and by reaching out to the family of the boy who killed his son.
That decision laid the groundwork for one of the most powerful stories of forgiveness in recent memory. Per PEOPLE, after Hicks was released from prison in 2019 following 24 years behind bars, he joined the very foundation created in his victim’s name, working alongside both Azim Khamisa and his own grandfather to speak to young people about the consequences of violence.
The two families, once bound by tragedy, became united in purpose. In their statement, Amy and Ples Felix remembered Hicks as someone who had genuinely transformed his life and committed himself to ensuring other children never made the choices he did as a teenager.
Hicks’ journey stood as a testament to the possibility of change, even in the wake of irreversible harm. Rather than being defined solely by the worst act of his youth, he spent his final years as living proof of what accountability, mentorship and forgiveness could accomplish when extended across seemingly unbridgeable divides.
His death marks the loss of a man whose story challenged conventional ideas about punishment and redemption, and who, alongside the family of the young man he killed, turned profound grief into a shared mission of healing.