Joe Rexrode

USA TODAY NETWORK -- Tennessee

“Is Javonte really dead?”

That’s how Brayden DeVault-Smith, an 18-year-old Pearl-Cohn senior football player, first learned of the fatal shooting of his good friend Javonte Robinson — a question asked in a group text message based on a rumor.

It was a conversation no one wanted to have about their former teammate on that night of Jan. 28. It had to be bogus, DeVault-Smith declared. Why would anyone want to shoot a person who got along with everybody?

Then someone posted a link to a Tennessean news story, describing how two suspects had opened fire that day on a vehicle in the 1000 block of North Dupont Avenue, killing one man and critically injuring another. It said Roy Hunter, 20, was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in “extremely critical condition.” It said Robinson, 18, died at the scene.

“I locked myself in the bathroom and just sat there for two hours,” DeVault-Smith said, and eventually that night the star linebacker sent another text to his friends and teammates.

“I can’t stop crying.”

Three days later, DeVault-Smith finished his workout in the cramped Pearl-Cohn weight room where he and Robinson had spent so many weeks lifting, laughing and arguing about football. Pearl-Cohn head coach Tony Brunetti told DeVault-Smith to keep his phone near him the rest of the night.

Shortly after DeVault-Smith got home, Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason called. They discussed DeVault-Smith’s plan to join Vanderbilt as a walk-on linebacker rather than accept a scholarship offer from Tennessee State.

Then Mason said: “Are you ready to sign your own scholarship?”

“What do you mean?” said DeVault-Smith, whose 2016 performance far exceeded his interest from colleges.

The next day, on national signing day, DeVault-Smith signed the last-minute scholarship offer from Mason. Then he smiled and posed for pictures with his mother, Mary DeVault, his younger sister, Amani, and extended family.

“It was nice,” DeVault-Smith said. “Got my mind off Javonte for a little bit.”

* * * * *

“They killed him, for what? It’s senseless. Senseless. And there’s no remorse," Brunetti said in his office this week. "And we wonder why society is going like it is.”

Brunetti cycled through the emotions, a few days after the murder of one of his favorite players. It’s not that Robinson was a star in a powerful program that has reached three straight Class 4A state semifinals. But he was relentless, unwilling to let a 5-foot-7 frame deter him.

He was a friend to many, a wrestler and soccer goalie who decided to give football as try as a sophomore. Brunetti smiled as he recalled Robinson’s nickname.

“Soccer Boy,” DeVault-Smith said, laughing with his coach. “I didn’t even know his first name for like the first three months I knew him.”

But they got close, and their hangout was that small weight room in the back of the school. If they weren’t pushing each other they were playfully ripping each other, part of a crew — and texting group — that included Darius Hunter Jr., Justin Brewington and Jonathan Mercer.

“We’d just laugh all day,” DeVault-Smith said.

Entering his senior season in the fall of 2015, Robinson looked like a different player to DeVault-Smith and the rest of the Firebirds.

The undersized cornerback won a starting job. Lost it and some confidence after giving up a key touchdown in a loss to Christ Presbyterian Academy. Got it back. Starred on special teams each week.

“A lot of kids would have thrown in the towel, but Javonte just kept working, kept getting better,” Pearl-Cohn defensive coordinator William Darnell said.

“He was always the underdog,” Brunetti said of Robinson, “but he thought he was Superman.”

While several teammates earned interest from college recruiters, Robinson sought out his own. Coaches from Culver-Stockton, an NAIA program in Canton, Mo., came through one day looking for receivers. Robinson announced: “I’m a receiver.”

“He had never played a snap of offense,” Pearl-Cohn assistant head coach Damien Harris said. “But you wouldn’t believe how hard he worked to become a receiver. He said, ‘Coach, I’ll do whatever it takes to make this team.”

Robinson walked on and sat out in the fall, then Culver-Stockton underwent a coaching change. He transferred to Western Kentucky at mid-semester, and Brunetti made plans to visit the new staff there as soon as possible, to tell them about a kid who would do anything to help them win.

Brunetti and DeVault-Smith smiled often as they reminisced about Robinson. Then the emotions cycled back around.

“The funeral, it was so sad, and it just makes you angry because this kid wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Brunetti said of Robinson.

“He’s an example of what people should be, of how people should treat other people,” said DeVault-Smith, who continues to cope with what he called the “emotional roller coaster” of the past few days.

“This has hurt him a lot,” Mary DeVault said. “But he knows what it means to lose someone.”

* * * * *

“Even though I only had him for a short time, I know I am the man I am today because of my father — because of the way he raised me during the five years he was with me, and because of the impact his death has had on my life.”

That’s an excerpt from the essay DeVault-Smith wrote as part of his application to Vanderbilt. It tells of waking up on Dec. 18, 2004, and being told by his mother that his father, Derrick Smith, had been shot dead the night before. It tells of the drive, strength and faith he gained from losing his dad at such a young age.

“It taught me not to take anyone or anything for granted because you truly never know when it will be your last time with them,” DeVault-Smith wrote in the essay.

The family lived in Jonesborough at the time, DeVault an East Tennessee State nursing school graduate and Smith a student there. DeVault, now a nurse at Vanderbilt, said she does not want to discuss the details of the tragedy.

But she described telling her children the next day about the shooting as "the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

Three teens have been arrested in the shootings of Robinson and Hunter, who remains hospitalized. It is being investigated as a robbery. It is another criminal homicide in a city that had 84 in 2016.

But it is much more than a statistic for those who loved Robinson. DeVault-Smith, who needlessly lost two people from his life, plans to start out pre-law at Vanderbilt and wants to help those who need it most.

“I want to make a difference,” he said, a desire instilled in him early by his mother and his church, Belle Meade United Methodist.

Brunetti believes Vanderbilt got a huge steal in DeVault-Smith, a recruit whose profile suffered because he missed many of the college showcase camps other football players attend. DeVault-Smith instead went on seven church mission trips during the past few summers, building roofs, repairing sidewalks and most recently feeding homeless people in Miami.

“You’d think they’d be all down and mad and stuff, but they weren’t,” he said. “They aren’t bad people. It was just one more thing that made me realize how much I have — one more reason I’m so grateful for my life.”

Reach Joe Rexrode at jrexrode@tennessean.com and follow him on Twitter @joerexrode.

TO DONATE

To help Javonte Robinson's adoptive mother, Gwendolyn Dillard, with funeral expenses, go to gofundme.com/in-memory-of-javonte-m-robinson. Also, Pearl-Cohn High has established a scholarship in Javonte's name, and donations can be made to that at gofundme.com/javonte-robinson-scholarship