If you’re around dateline gallery on a Thursday afternoon, you might catch three people outside, just sitting, having a snack and chatting in front of a mural portraying a young man named Andy Billinger.

Billinger was tragically murdered at 38-years-old on June 29, 2021, while meeting up with someone from Facebook Marketplace to sell an Xbox. He met with the person at a McDonalds parking lot near South Parker Road and Yale Avenue in Aurora to make the exchange, and he was shot on the site. Twenty-two-year-old Treyvion Simpson was arrested in July 2021 and charged with murder.

Billinger’s girlfriend, MJ Holton, describes him as someone who was always about “humanity first.” He was close with New York businessman and 2020 presidential hopeful Andrew Yang, who even wrote Billinger’s eulogy. Holton and Billinger went to Yang’s rally in Pennsylvania when he was running for president, and Billinger often campaigned for him on Twitter. “Him and his wife called us and offered condolences,” Holton says. “He wrote a really beautiful eulogy. He came to Denver and signed it for us.”

Billinger touched many lives, including muralist Chris Haven. Billinger and Haven were both artists and friends, so when Billinger was killed, his family knew they wanted to reach out to Haven to do a mural. Holton says she even sold stickers of artwork Billinger had done to pay for it. “We had just found out Chris was still doing graffiti two weeks before he was killed,” Holton says. “Then it was just…