BATON ROUGE — If anyone ever needed a helping hand, 21-year-old Southern University student Donovan Pugh was the first to offer it. Now, those he helped are wishing they could do something for him after he was shot and killed during a suspected home invasion earlier this month.
“He was a sweet, loving person. Very chivalrous to women. He got that from his dad,” Pugh’s mother, Wendy Hansell told UWK. “He would walk them to class. He would walk their dogs. He would open the doors. He would help them move. He would carry their groceries.”
Since his death on Dec. 3, Hansell has received an outpouring of messages from Pugh’s fellow students, and even students’ parents, talking about how kind and helpful he was. “It seems like everybody he ever met has something to say,” she said.
“I knew this about him just from us going out to Winn Dixie, and he’d help pregnant ladies push their baskets, or help elderly women,” she recalled. “I know he’s doing that, and I see it, but I’m his mom. So to see that strangers were seeing it, it was him. He was authentically, just a sweet natured gentleman.”
Suspected home invasion
Hansell said the suspected home invasion on Dec. 3 wasn’t the first time her son was directly impacted by crime at his apartment complex, Cadence at Southern University on Scenic Highway. “Someone had broken into several of the kids homes on Thanksgiving day,” she said. “He was here in New Orleans at our home. And when he went back, all of his stuff was gone. But he didn’t tell me. He didn’t tell me or his dad.”
Hansell spoke with her son’s roommate, who told her they reported the robbery to the office, but nothing was done. So, in the days after the Thanksgiving Day break-in, Pugh went to Dick’s Sporting Goods or Walmart and legally purchased a gun for protection.
On Dec. 3, Pugh and his roommate were home when someone came in. “He was talking to them, he never fired his gun. Just said, ‘Hey, man, get out of here,’ or something like that. And they shot him,” Hansell said.
Even in his final moments, Pugh was in protection-mode. “He was protecting him and his roommate, because the guy was crying and saying, ‘We don’t have anything else. Get out,” Hansell said.
Pugh’s family has set up a GoFundMe to raise reward money to help catch the suspects. You can donate here.
Future plans
This was Pugh’s third year at Southern, and while he was still a sophomore, he was just a few credits away from his junior year. “He was studying criminal justice. Chronically studying,” Hansell said. “He wanted to eventually be a lawyer, but he wanted to get into law enforcement first and he wanted to learn every branch of it, to then be a great lawyer and then a judge.”
“He was so excited about graduation and making a change.”
Donovan’s memory
To everyone, especially his mom, Pugh will be remembered as a caring, loving, and selfless man. “He loved everybody. He wanted the best for everybody,” Hansell said. “His last post on Instagram was, ‘I love to see everybody around me doing good.’ He was just a joyous person. Very unselfish and helpful. Any way that he could help somebody, he would. It was like that was his purpose in life, just to help people, just a wonderful, sweet young man.”
As well as his parents and friends, Pugh’s younger brother is also mourning. “He was an amazing big brother,” Hansell said. Hansell told UWK that her 17-year-old son had aspirations of going to LSU next year, and Pugh was making plans for the two of them in Baton Rouge. “He was like, ‘By the time he graduates, I’ll be in my final year. I need to show him around Baton Rouge.'”
All of those plans have changed following Pugh’s death. “My baby boy now wants no part of Baton Rouge,” she said. “He misses his brother, and this has done something to him. He’s so paranoid he doesn’t want to take the dog out. He’s watching over his shoulders thinking that somebody is going to get him.”
Living on
Pugh’s giving nature will live on even though he’s not here, through organ donation. “The coroner’s office called me the next day before they shipped him to New Orleans and asked if I would be willing to donate his organs,” she said. “It was very hard, but he was a giver. I know that he would have wanted people to live on.”
“I didn’t know they took that much. They literally took the eyes out of his head so someone is going to see. They took his heart, his lungs, his liver.” Hansell said. “They took so much of him. And as hurtful as it was, I know how unselfish he was, so I didn’t have a problem with it.”
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