The Virginian-Pilot
©
NORFOLK
From the outside looking in, it was clear someone’s birthday was being celebrated inside Old Dominion University’s Webb University Center.
There was live music, cupcakes iced with several colors of frosting, party decorations covering the walls, and people taking photos.
But Christopher Cummings couldn’t celebrate his 21st birthday with his family and friends on Sunday.
The ODU student was shot and killed June 10 in his rental house on West 42nd Street. His roommate, Jake Carey, was shot multiple times and survived. The case remains unsolved.
“Please if you know anything, say something,” Rosa Cummings said after a video montage of her son played. “I’m begging you guys. Whatever you guys want … just help me to find these guys.”
Carey called the shooter a “plague” in the community and said he wants to see him locked up.
“I want to look into the eyes of the person who shot me in the back,” he said. “This place should be a safe haven for all of its students.”
That sentiment is the purpose of the Campus Safety Act, a bill that would create a National Center for Campus Public Safety. The national center would provide universities and law enforcement agencies the best practices for campus safety.
The legislation, cosponsored by Cummings’ uncle, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. and Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., has twice passed in the House but never in the Senate. New support from Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., brings hope that the bill will be approved.
“We’re sorrowful, but we’re going to use this to try to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” said Scott, who attended Sunday’s event.
Carey said he always had been aware there was crime around campus and had even heard about someone being robbed of his shoes at knifepoint, but after June 10, his perception changed.
“That night was the scariest moment in my life,” he said. “I will never forget waking up to the sound of my door being broken in.”
Since the shooting, ODU has hired additional police officers, enhanced lighting in campus garages, added more “blue light” emergency phones and encouraged city officials and landlords to provide additional safety measures.
Rosa Cummings also asked that the nearly 150 students attending the event be cautious about strangers and look out for their friends.
“I was not there to protect him, please watch your back,” she said.
Lauren King, 757-446-2309, lauren.king@pilotonline.com
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Waiting on more info to come out
As a member of a family of a loved one who was murdered, I must say I'm leary of throwing my support behind this family. Until we have the answers to why there was a bong in the photgraph the Pilot took, I'm waiting to see if the boy was innocent or was there some sort of illegal activity going on that brought that murderer to his door that night.
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Comment removed for rules violation. Reason: Off topic
Slain ODU student remembered on his 21st birthday
Has the angle of illegal activity in and around the apt. where the forced entry occurred been investigated? Was that apt. possibly targeted, possibly incorrectly, and this young man paid the ultimate price for being in the wrong apartment at the wrong time? Someone knows more than is being told. And as the father of a college freshman, my heart goes out to the Cummings family.
End the war on pot,
and end this type of senseless killing.