Scholarship Named in Honor of Slain SUNO Student

Davon Lee Leggett

 
Special to the Outlook from Trice Edney News Wire

Southern University at New Orleans honored one of its prominent students who was tragically killed over the Katrina anniversary weekend by starting a scholarship in his name.

 
With the SUNO family still mourning and in disbelief after learning of the popular student’s tragic death, the university announced the establishment of the

Southern University at New Orleans honored one of its prominent students who was tragically killed over the Katrina anniversary weekend by starting a scholarship in his name.

 
With the SUNO family still mourning and in disbelief after learning of the popular student’s tragic death, the university announced the establishment of the Davon Lee Leggett

Scholarship Fund after the 22-year-old was shot and killed early Saturday morning, Aug. 29, at a Terrytown apartment complex.

 
“Since this happened, I’ve cried a lot,” Leggett’s uncle, Timmie Leggett, told FOX 8 News last week. “I’m still baffled by this senseless shooting — and what for? I could speculate a billion things.”

 
Davon’s friends, classmates, professors, mentors and family recently gathered on SUNO’s Lakefront campus for a vigil reflecting on the young man’s life ripped away while he was striving to carve out a better life for himself.

 
Several hundred people attended the vigil, with about a dozen people reflecting how their lives were impacted by the slain student, who many called upbeat and positive-minded.

 
SUNO SGA vice president Dominique Carter, for example, told those gathered that the fourth-year education major told her before she was recently elected vice president, “You will be something big.”

 
“By the time you met Davon and you were in just one class session, you knew who Davon was,” said classmate Jarred Jupiter. “It was a great thing because he was always inspired SUNO Education Professor Dr. Louise Kaltenbaugh told FOX 8. “He was visiting friends. He walked his cousin to his car because his cousin was going home. He turned around to come back to the apartment complex and he was ambushed.”

 
Kaltenbaugh took Davon in so he could save money on living expenses. Davon grew up with an impoverished background and lost his father to gun violence before he was even born.

 
“His mother had to deal with that, and we wouldn’t have dreamed something like that would have happened in this world,” Timmie Leggett told FOX 8. “So there’s a lot to say about the violence here in the city.”

 
“He didn’t just want to be a teacher — he was a teacher,” Celina Carson, an assistant professor of Health, Nutrition and Physical Education at SUNO, said. She said Davon taught small children who attended her summer program.

 
Leggett was an original member of the Honoré Center for Undergraduate Study Achievement, a program named in honor of retired Lt. General Russel Honoré that nurtures young Black males and prepares them for careers in education.

 
“A young man trying to defy the odds, trying by doing everything you’re supposed to do. Young Black man in college, finished three years and entering his fourth year and he’s still gone too,” Director of the Honoré Center for Undergraduate Student Achievement Warren Bell said.

 
Jefferson Parish detectives have made an arrest in Davon’s murder. Cardell Mack, 25, from Gentilly, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder Saturday morning, Sept. 26. Robbery was the apparent motive in the shooting.