Friends of 20-year-old Kevin Raymond continued to grapple Sunday with the sudden death of the popular football player in an early-morning shooting Saturday in Somerville.

“This is crazy. He didn’t deserve it. I wish it wasn’t him,’’ said Alton Palmer, 21, of Medford, who had become friends with Raymond in the summer before seventh grade.

Palmer said in a phone interview that Raymond was “well-known because he was such a good person. He wasn’t a bad kid. . . . Everyone enjoyed being around him. Everyone liked him.’’

Raymond was shot in a parking lot on Canal Lane shortly after 3:30 a.m. Saturday, according to a statement from the Middlesex district attorney’s office. He was pronounced dead in a nearby hospital.

More than 40 people, including Raymond’s brother and many old friends, gathered Saturday evening for a candlelight vigil in the parking lot inside a Somerville public housing development where Raymond was shot, according to Helen Mahoney, 48, a longtime family friend.

“It was really sad,’’ Mahoney said. “There wasn’t too much talking. It was really hard for a lot of people to take. . . . I’m still not grasping it myself.’’

She said mourners brought flowers, said a prayer, and held candles in Raymond’s memory. Some wrote messages on helium balloons and then released them to drift up into the gray evening sky. Raymond’s mother, who had raised her two sons on her own, did not attend, Mahoney said.

Mahoney said she had known Raymond his whole life, and had encouraged him as a youngster to sign up for Pop Warner football. She said he played the game with her son, who was like a brother to Raymond. On Sunday, Mahoney’s son was grieving the loss and declined to speak to a reporter.

Residents in the development where Raymond was shot said that he had several friends who lived there, and that he visited often.

Michael Richards, 30, said he had seen Raymond and some other people in their early 20s gathered in the parking lot a few hours before the shooting. They appeared to be working on a subwoofer in the trunk of a parked car, he added.

“He was a good kid,’’ Richards said. “I’ve met him a couple of times. He always seemed nice.’’

Palmer, Raymond’s friend from Medford, said they met through mutual friends at Somerville’s Dilboy Pool.

“That summer, we were at the pool like every day,’’ he said. “And then we would just go do whatever.’’

Palmer reminisced about the carefree days before adult responsibilities set in, when he and Raymond could “wake up and just go out and hang out with your friends. . . . It’s too bad you can’t go back in time.’’

He said they played basketball in parks with other friends when they were younger, and later they competed in football when Raymond became a running back for Somerville High and Palmer was a lineman for Medford High. “He was a very physical player,’’ Palmer said of Raymond. “He took the sport very seriously.’’

Over time, they drifted apart somewhat, but they stayed in touch on Facebook and would occasionally catch up in person, Palmer said. When they saw each other last year, Palmer learned that Raymond was still playing football as a student at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire.

“I was very happy to hear that he was going to college and playing football,’’ Palmer said. “That’s something that every high school player dreams of.’’

Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com.