15/08/2025
"My son was everything, an awesome young man," said the mother of Davell Antoine Holden III. "My baby was loved by so many people... Davell was a true athlete. He poured love into everyone not just his family, but his friends, his teachers, his coaches, anybody who came in contact with my son."
Davell was a rising junior at Thornwood High School, where he was an honor student in the classroom and a standout athlete on the basketball court. He wore the number 21 jersey for the Thornwood Thunderbirds,a nd hoped to go on to play basketball at the college level. He worked hard to improve his skills, but also to uplift all of his teammates.
"Purity, effort and honesty, that's all he cared about," said a close friend. "He was really focused on progression, he wanted to get better, he wanted to see us as a program get better, so we were really focusing on, for him individually, his layup package... Now we gotta put in two times the work, because now we're fighting for a greater purpose."
On the evening of Saturday, August 2nd, Davell was at a friend's house, but at around 7pm police responded to a call and found him shot in the front yard of a home. Neighbors say they heard the shots and saw other teens trying to revive him, but it isn't clear what happened.
Davell died of his injuries. He was 16 years old.
Sources:
https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/community-mourns-south-holland-teen-killed-weekend-shooting
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/family-mourns-death-of-thornwood-basketball-player-killed-in-south-holland/3805802/