A 14-year-old in Louisville, Kentucky, really stepped up his kindness game.
LaRon Tunstill, who goes by the nickname “Ron Ron,” took his brand new sneakers off his feet and gave them to a homeless man he met on the street, WDRB, a Fox-affiliated TV station in Louisville, reported.
Tunstill was handing out food to homeless people with PurpMe, a local nonprofit that encourages and facilitates acts of kindness, over Labor Day weekend when one man caught his eye.
“You could tell like he’s been hurt so many times,” Tunstill told CNN affiliate WAVE.
The teenager sat down next to the man and began talking to him, when he noticed his tattered shoes.
“The soles were completely gone. His toes literally touched the ground.”
- Jason Reynolds, founder of PurpMe's, description of the man's shoes
“The soles were completely gone,” said Jason Reynolds, founder of PurpMe, told The Wave. “His toes literally touched the ground.”
That’s when Tunstill took off his brand new Nike Air Jordans, that he had only owned for a day, and gave them to the man.
“He didn’t want to take the shoes at first but I told him take them because that’s what God wanted me to do,” Tunstill told inside Edition.
Reynolds took a picture of the sweet moment and posted it to PurpMe’s Facebook page on September 5.
The photo quickly went viral and has received 12,000 likes and over 8,000 shares.
Reynolds told ABC News that Tunstill has come a long way since he started working with him three years ago.
“Ron Ron was a wild kid. He grew up in a rough area where people get shot all the time,” Reynolds told the outlet. “The streets affected him a little, and at one point, he was fighting more, being disrespectful.”
Yet, Reynolds said after he started mentoring Tunstill and the teen began working with PurpMe, Tunstill has made a 180.
“Now, he’s the one mentoring other kids,” Reynolds said.
The Wave reports that since the photo of Tunstilll went viral, a donor has bought him a new pair of shoes.
PurpMe has also started a GoFundMe page, which will donate 100 percent of the proceeds to helping more kids like Tunstill.
“I started these PurpMe teams to replace the gangs and violence in our streets with community outreaches and love in our streets,” Reynolds told ABC News. “We may not have much ourselves, but we do the best with what we got. We just want to start a movement of people loving and uplifting one another.”
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