HS football player gunned down while saving others
With all the bad publicity surrounding football players these days, we can share a story of bravery by one young man that gave up his life to save fellow students.
Zaevion Williams Dobson heard shots being fired in Knoxville this December weekend. Knoxville police say three men, possibly gang bangers, fired into a crowd at a holiday gathering. Dobson reacted quickly, jumping on top of three girls to prevent them from getting hit. They were all in the line of fire. Dobson took the bullet and the girls were saved. Dobson was killed.
Faith Gordon was one of the girls. She remembers how Dobson laid on on top of her, lifeless, when the shooting stopped. “ I was like ‘You can get up now’ … He didn’t get up,” said Gordon. “I looked at him and he was shot in the head,”
Dobson was a sophomore football player at Fulton HS in Knoxville. His coach, Rob Black, spoke about the young man at a news conference.
“It’s going to be a tough time here as we leave from here and go meet with our football players,” Black said. “This is a fine, fine young man who is a success story,” he said. “And and I want to try to continue to celebrate the life that he had here and the impact that he made on his peers.”
“He was really one of our success stories,” said Madeline Roger, Knoxville Mayer. “(He was) involved in sports, a mentee of one of our organizations in town. But still he falls victim to this.”
The man who fired the shot that killed Dobson also died. Police identified him as 23-year old Brandon Perry.
“If it wasn’t for Zaevion, if he would have just ran off the porch, we would have probably been shot,” Kiara Rucker to WVLT
“You’re my hero, I’ll never forget you,” Faith Gordon on Twitter
“These cowardly and senseless acts of violence must stop. We should be preparing to celebrate the Christmas holiday, but now we have two men who are dead.” — Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch to Associated Press
UPDATE: Suspect Arrested in Connection w/ Three Overnight Shootings That Resulted in 2 Deaths https://t.co/YL9FPb7jDU pic.twitter.com/Q3esI3QquT
— Knoxville Police (@Knoxville_PD) December 18, 2015
IMAGES: Knoxville PS
