The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff women’s basketball team played last week’s Tuesday night game with heavy hearts, mourning the death of freshman ROTC cadet and student-athlete Sierra’li Wade, who died after being shot in her hometown of Lake Village.
UAPB stated on a Facebook post that Wade was shot while playing basketball.
It is the black university’s 5th student death this semester.
“It’s a sad day for all of us,” Wade’s advisor Cedric Jackson said, adding that “She was the person who loved life and she was going to live it to the fullest.”
“Miss Wade would always come into the office [and] she demanded attention,” Jackson said.
“She maximized her life. I mean, she was the type of person that, she wasn’t going to, you know, neglect whatever she had to do. She was going to always be, you know, on top of everything.”
School counselors said that they have set up support for students mourning the death of their colleague(s).
“I’ve been in higher ed for over 40 years and I’ve never experienced this number of tragedies in one semester,” UAPB’s Director of Counseling, Joyce Bracy Vaughan, told KARK.com.
Our sympathy is with the UAPB community in their time of grieving.
