CRONKITE--Peter Reilly 
 
 
 
 Rush, 22, died Sunday, April 26, 2015 in Waterville, ME. He took his own life. Peter was to have graduated from Colby College, as a Classics major, in May. Peter was graduated from St. Bernard's School in Manhattan and Horace Mann School in the Bronx. Peter was Sports Editor of the Colby Echo and co-captain of the Colby rugby team. His life on teams in school and area hockey leagues as a goalie was a great happiness in his life. As a Classics major he spent one summer course studying in Greece and another on an ancheological dig in Ostia, Italy. He was slated to receive the Foster Prize for excellence in his major. Last summer he worked for his beloved Mets team at Citi Field. He also worked during the 2012 Olympics for Sports Illustrated. Peter enjoyed tutoring at the Colby Writing Center for the past two years and coached youth hockey. Peter, an avid film enthusiast, was the voice of Dennis the Menace for an animated movie when he was nine years old. He will be missed by his many Martha's Vineyard friends. Peter is survived by his parents, Deborah Rush and Chip Cronkite, and his brother Walter Cronkite lV. The funeral service will be held Saturday, May 2, 11am, at the Church of the Heavenly Rest. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Colby College Men's Rugby Team. ||||| Dear Members of the Colby Community, 
 
 It is with deep sadness that I write to report that Peter Cronkite ’15 took his own life this weekend. Peter’s death is devastating to his family, his many friends, and the entire Colby community. Our hearts are heavy as we try to come to terms with this tremendous loss. 
 
 A classical civilization major and cinema studies minor from New York City, Peter was a dedicated member of the men’s rugby team and was sports editor of the Colby Echo. Peter had great passion for the ancient world, and he was slated to receive the department’s Foster Prize for Classical Civilization for achieving excellence in his major. His love of participating in athletics, which had been an important part of his life since he was very young, combined with his intelligence and kind, incredibly likeable personality, won him scores of friends and admirers at Colby. 
 
 I know I am not the only person for whom this raises intense emotions. Of course those who were closest to Peter bear the greatest burden. But the death of a member of our community is a loss for everyone. At this time it is especially important for us to remember our commitment to taking care of one another in every way we can. If you have concerns about yourself or anyone you know, please reach out to the Dean of Students Office, the counseling center, or the Office of Security. 
 
 We have opened the Rose Chapel today for any member of the community who would like a place for quiet reflection or to talk with a member of the counseling staff or chaplain staff. All are also welcome to drop into the health center or set up a meeting with a counselor through counseling@colby.edu or the Dean of Students Office (dos@colby.edu, 859-4250). 
 
 At 5 p.m. today we will gather informally in Lorimer Chapel to remember Peter and reflect on this loss. All are welcome. Additionally, we have lowered the flag in his memory. In the coming days we will be in touch with additional information about memorial services and opportunities to remember Peter. In the meantime, I hope you will watch out for one another and seek support for yourself as needed. 
 
 I know I speak for the entire community in expressing my condolences to Peter’s family and friends. 
 
 Sincerely, 
 
 David A. Greene ||||| Arshell Dennis, 19-year old journalism student, was gunned down on the steps of his mother's home in what police are saying was an arbitrary killing. Dennis reportedly was there to surprise his sick mother on her birthday. (Reuters) 
 
 Arshell “Trey” Dennis, the third of his name, moved to New York to escape the home he loved. 
 
 He grew up in the South Side of Chicago, a city that employs his father as a police officer but has also profiled the 19-year-old because of the color of his skin. It’s a city seemingly constantly in turmoil — bleeding each weekend from dozens of gun-related killings — and an environment Dennis said he felt thankful to leave. 
 
 “I do appreciate that I am where I am,” he told his college roommate in a video interview last year. “A lot of people where I’m from don’t make it out.” 
 
 The teen had plans: to graduate from St. John’s University in New York City and become a writer, to channel what he’d learned about poetry and struggle into words that might make something shift. He couldn’t change the world — he said for that he’d need two lifetimes — but Dennis felt his path, where he came from and what he knew, might be able to “influence.” 
 
 “If you don’t know me,” he said in the video, “you gonna know me.” 
 
 19-year-old killed in Chicago once thought he'd escaped the city's cycle of violence: https://t.co/iBqMBqN9nn pic.twitter.com/C1P1Ng0Rrb — CBS News (@CBSNews) August 15, 2016 
 
 Just weeks from entering his junior year at St. John’s, the aspiring journalist and past NAACP student chapter vice president flew back home to Chicago for the weekend, WGN TV reported, a surprise for his sick mother’s birthday. 
 
 He sat on the porch of his family’s home Saturday night, talking with a hometown friend, when gunfire split the stillness of his ordinarily quiet Wrightwood neighborhood. 
 
 Both were shot. 
 
 The friend, 20 years old, was hospitalized. 
 
 Dennis died. 
 
 His mother’s screams echoed down the block. 
 
 “You do not want to hear a mother’s cry for her son,” a neighbor, who would only identify herself as Brenda, told the Chicago Tribune. 
 
 Arshell 'Trey' Dennis III, CPD officer's son, killed in front of family home in Wrightwood. https://t.co/4QdpqdayYc pic.twitter.com/1qyZIYoUEM — Chicago Homicide (@ChicagoHomicide) August 14, 2016 
 
 As of late Monday night, there had been no arrest, and authorities said the investigation was still open and active. 
 
 In a news conference Monday afternoon, Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson said authorities were treating the shooting as a case of “mistaken identity.” 
 
 “Arshell was a good kid, making his parents proud and studying for a promising future,” Johnson said in a statement. 
 
 The superintendent, who worked with Dennis’s father, Officer Arshell “Chico” Dennis, in the 1990s, visited the family Sunday and said in the statement he was “at a loss for words for the amount of grief” they are experiencing. 
 
 Though it’s well known in the neighborhood that the elder Dennis, a Drug Enforcement Administration task force officer, worked for the Chicago Police Department, the superintendent said there is “absolutely no credibility” to the theory that Arshell was targeted because of his father’s occupation. 
 
 Superintendent says Arshell Dennis, son of CPD officer was not targeted bc his Dad was a police officer. — Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) August 15, 2016 
 
 The two young men had no criminal records or personal histories of gang involvement, a police spokesman told the Chicago Tribune, but the shooting could still be gang-related. Some gangs have been conducting initiations, a police official told the Chicago Sun-Times, where recruits are instructed to shoot and kill whomever they find. 
 
 “That’s a rite of passage for them,” Johnson told CBS News. “Now how bizarre is that?” 
 
 On Sunday, the day Dennis was to return to New York, his loved ones scrubbed his blood from their sidewalk instead. 
 
 “The loss of our son is stunning and painful,” the Dennis family said in a statement to the Sun-Times. “Tragically, we were going to take him to the airport today at 3 p.m. to return to school. Now because of this senseless violence, we will be grieving and planning his funeral. Trey was smart, funny, and the light of our lives.” 
 
 Dennis graduated from Urban Prep Academy in 2014, where he ran cross country, played chess and participated in the Louder Than a Bomb poetry competition, according to his LinkedIn page. He also belonged to a preparatory program called Upward Bound. It was from a student in the program that director Gerald Smith heard the tragic news. 
 
 “I got the phone call, and my heart just fell to my stomach,” Smith told the Tribune. “So, so unexpected. … I’m still in disbelief.” 
 
 Last summer, Dennis returned to Chicago to work as an Upward Bound ambassador, Smith said. 
 
 “He was one of my better students, he really was,” Smith said. “Arshell was a fun time. He was real easygoing, real quiet, laid-back, mild-mannered — he wasn’t a problem at all. It’s a tragic loss.” 
 
 One of my former students was murdered this weekend in #Chicago gun violence. I'm horrified, saddened, and sickened. #ArshellDennis — (((brad keil))) (@clompthestrong) August 15, 2016 
 
 Terri Bachstrom, a neighbor and lunchroom attendant in Chicago Public Schools, told the Sun-Times Dennis was a well-mannered, quiet kid. 
 
 “He wasn’t in a gang. He wasn’t affiliated with any of the nonsense that’s going on in Chicago,” Bachstrom said. “He wasn’t one of those kids.” 
 
 Johnson said at the news conference Monday that to date in 2016, 85 percent of gunshot victims have had prior contact with police. Dennis and his friend were the exception, and yet this weekend, the two became part of the city’s growing violence statistics. In the same weekend Dennis died, nine people were killed and 31 more wounded in shootings across Chicago. 
 
 Since Jan. 1, 2,607 people have been shot in the city, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis, on pace to far exceed the number of shootings last year, which totaled 2,988. 
 
 It’s the kind of violence that Dennis used to discuss at St. John’s with his freshman-year roommate, 20-year-old Kyle DePina of Boston, reported the Sun-Times. 
 
 “It’s crazy,” DePina told the newspaper. “You never think it will happen to someone you’re close to until it happens.” 
 
 It was DePina who recorded Dennis in the 8-minute interview posted to YouTube in April 2015. They talk about police brutality and racial stereotypes. DePina asks his friend about his goals, what he wants to do, who he wants to be. 
 
 “I do think that I’ll be able to influence a lot the way people think,” Dennis said. “And give them an outlook on the things I’ve been through, and things that people where I come from go through, and just help them get through the struggles that they go through.” 
 
 That potential was universally mourned over the weekend. 
 
 “He was a promising child,” Brenda, the neighbor, told the Sun-Times. “He was going somewhere.”
– Peter Cronkite, 22-year-old grandson of Walter Cronkite, committed suicide in his Colby College dorm room Sunday, weeks before he was to graduate from the Maine school, People reports. "Peter, an avid film enthusiast, was the voice of Dennis the Menace for an animated movie when he was nine years old," reads an obituary that appeared in the New York Times. He was sports editor of the college paper, served as co-captain of the school's rugby team, played and coached hockey, and tutored, among other things, it continues. He was also "slated to receive the department’s Foster Prize for Classical Civilization for achieving excellence in his major," the college president wrote in a letter to students.