For his nineteenth birthday on Thursday, Karim Meskine lay in his hospital bed in a coma, hooked to life support, barely clinging to life.

Two days earlier in what police believe was a random attack by a 16-year-old stranger, Meskine was beaten with a baseball bat. Police believe it was an attempted robbery that morphed into something much more severe.

On Friday, surrounded by friends and family, the machines were turned off, and Meskine, just one day into his last year of being a teenager, was dead.

“No father should be put — no family — nobody should be put in that situation in life,” family friend Lewis Oladuntoye said Saturday. “I witnessed that yesterday.

“Nobody should go through that.”

On Tuesday night police found Meskine near the New Westminster SkyTrain station unconscious and badly beaten after a passerby called 911.

Police believe the 16-year-old suspect charged in the incident attacked him unprovoked, possibly attempting to rob him.

Originally charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon, police are expected to recommend murder charges be laid against the suspect next week.

Described by Oladuntoye as a “very quiet, simple, easy-going, not flashy” kid who didn’t even own a cell phone, for friends the young man’s death is hard to understand and accept.

“I was thinking…it’s just impossible for anyone to attack this boy,” friend Tunde Alatise said. “Nobody deserves to die the way he died.”

A friend of Meskine’s father, Gilbert Moore, said when he visited Meskine in the hospital what he saw was so horrific he had to leave the room.

“The beating was so severe it looked like somebody who is in a rage and so angry at somebody,” Moore said. ” If it is robbery then why don’t you just take whatever you want and go? Why do you have to kill him? It’s sad.”

A memorial Facebook page, R.I.P Karim, started Friday had more than 600 likes by Saturday afternoon as comments from people giving condolences to the family poured in.

Friends will be gathering in Surrey on Monday to hold a memorial dinner and try to bring some relief to the grief of a very fresh loss.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Scott Roberts.