Slain Howard University student ‘would have found a fabulous way to contribute’

The Late OMAR SYKES

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Omar Sykes arrived at Howard University having spent most of his life hopping across Africa, forming a uniquely broad view of the world and his place in it. He saw the campus as isolated from its urban, and sometimes gritty, surroundings and set out to integrate the two.

His dream went unrealized. Sykes was killed July 4, 2013, during a robbery outside his apartment, a block from campus. The 22-year-old marketing major was targeted, police say, because he was a Howard student.

Rasdavid Lagarde, a young man who hung out in the neighborhood around the university, shot Sykes in the chest with a .380 handgun. It was an accident, Lagarde told police. He said he was “drunk, down on his luck and broke.” On Wednesday, Lagarde pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and faces a prison sentence of 20 to 30 years.

The shooting nearly two years ago ended a promising life and called attention to crime at and around Howard, in the neighborhood Sykes had worked so hard to pull together.

Sykes, the son of globe-trotting members of the diplomatic corps, was the leader of Howard’s chapter of Alpha Phi Omega, a co-ed service-oriented fraternity from which he preached — and practiced — community involvement. Sykes was out in the neighborhood, talking to people who lived near campus, repairing houses, attending community meetings and helping children.

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