A memorial was held for Malcolm Shabazz on Thursday at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, after his violent murder in Mexico. The grandson of 1960s civil rights activist Malcolm X, Shabazz "idolized his grandfather" but never knew him, his aunt Ilyasah Shabazz said at the memorial service, The New York Times reports.

Several hundred friends and family attended the service, which was located just a block from Malcolm X Boulevard, AP reports. Shabazz's childhood schoolteacher Angela Freeman recalled his troubled past, but all agreed he had "redeemed himself" before his premature death.

Shabazz, 28, was beaten to death earlier this month in Mexico City. The fight broke out over a $1,200 bar bill. Two waiters at the Palace nightclub near Mexico City's popular Garibaldi Square, David Hernandez and Manuel Perez, have been arrested and face charges of murder and robbery, Yahoo! News reports.

According to The New York Times, Shabazz could even quote his grandfather verbatim and looked up to him as an influential figure in his life.

"It was difficult to be the grandchild of such a powerful man," Freeman said. 

"He was an emerging light," the imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood, added during the service.

Shabazz had traveled throughout the United States and overseas, speaking about social justice and rallying support for black causes worldwide.

Former NBA player Etan Thomas mournfully brought up Malcolm's potential during the memorial.

"Malcolm was just scratching the surface of where he wanted to go," he said.

"His grandfather would have been very proud," Freeman continued. "I'm sad today, but am also very proud of the young man he became."

Shabazz was buried last week near his grandparents at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, north of New York City.

Shabazz had a troubled childhood. In 1997, when he was 12, he set a fire in his grandmother's New York apartment that left her critically injured. She died a few months later from the burns. Shabazz pleaded guilty and spent 18 months in juvenile detention for manslaughter and arson. He got out after four years, but two years later, when he was 18, was back in prison for an attempted robbery.