Thursday, July 11, 2013

Howard University mourns slain student at memorial service

WASHINGTON, D.C.  --  More than 500 people gathered at Howard University’s Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel on Wednesday evening to remember Omar Adam Sykes, a rising senior who was shot and killed during an attempted robbery just outside the campus July 4.

Relatives, friends, Howard officials and Mayor Vincent C. Gray spoke about the student, who had turned 22 days before his death.

“This just simply should not have happened,” Gray said to the packed chapel as he chastised federal lawmakers for not taking “sensible steps” to keep guns off the streets.

Gray also said at the service that police had made an arrest recently in the June 1 burglary of Sykes’s Northwest Washington apartment. Police have not indicated any connection between that burglary and Sykes’s death nearly five weeks later. No one has been arrested in the slaying.

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