A man who was fatally shot late Monday in Pittsburgh’s Larimer neighborhood was a Woodland Hills High School football standout and high honor roll student who went on to the gridiron at a Baltimore university.
Gavin Yarbough, 21, of Braddock Hills was shot multiple times and taken to UPMC Presbyterian hospital in a private vehicle around 11 p.m. Monday, authorities said. He died there shortly after.
Police responded around 10:50 p.m. to reports of gunfire in the 100 block of Meadow Street.
Investigators processed evidence at the scene and said they would obtain a search warrant for the vehicle that transported Yarbough to the hospital.
Yarbough graduated from Woodland Hills High School in 2021.
“Gavin was a popular and well-liked student during his time at Woodland Hills,” Superintendent Daniel Castagna said in a statement. “Our sincere condolences are with his friends and family during this unimaginably difficult time.”
When reached by phone Tuesday, Yarbough’s grandmother said the family wasn’t ready to comment.
As of Tuesday afternoon, police had not announced any arrests.
Yarbough was enrolled as a junior this year at Morgan State University, a Historically Black College or University in Baltimore, where he majored in business administration.
In a statement, the university said it mourned Yarbough’s death and expressed sympathy to his family.
Yarbough appeared on the 2023 Morgan State Bears roster as a defensive back, standing 5 feet 10 inches and 165 pounds. He is listed as having last played in November in a 14-7 loss to the Howard Bison.
But, school officials said, it was at Woodland Hills where Yarbough left his mark.
Ron Coursey saw Yarbough almost daily while working as Woodland Hills’ athletic director from 2017 to 2021.
“Not only was he a starter, he was strong academically,” said Coursey, today an athletic director in York County. “It’s always a sense of pride when you play a small part in a young man’s journey. I was very, very proud of the young man he was becoming.”
In Yarbough’s senior year, he flourished, school officials said. A First Team All-Conference player for the Woodland Hills Wolverines — a season-defining honor for the defensive back — Yarbough made the high honors roll and helped lead the Black Student Union.
In his junior year, Yarbough joined Coursey and others to tour 10 Historically Black Colleges and Universities with the fraternity Omega Psi Phi.
That group, which three Howard University undergrads formed in 1911, bills itself as the first international fraternal organization founded at a historically Black college.
Coursey said he had been in regular contact with Yarbough since the young man graduated three years ago. But, he stressed he wasn’t the only person expecting big things from him.
“Gavin always had that entrepreneurial spirit,” Coursey told TribLive on Tuesday. “He was a go-getter.”
Yarbough, who went by the nickname “Loc,” aspired to own a business, according to his biography on a university website. He had been running his own clothing brand, called Doue Worldwide, since March 2021, according to his LinkedIn page.
He identified Aaron Donald, the University of Pittsburgh alumnus who played 10 NFL seasons, as his biggest sports influence.
Coursey and others on Tuesday lamented how gun violence continues to ravage the communities Woodland Hills schools serve.
Yarbough had just finished his freshman year at the Churchill-based, regional high school when a shooting took the life of classmate Antwon Rose. The Black teenager and Woodland Hills High School student was just weeks shy of his 18th birthday when an East Pittsburgh police officer shot and killed him on June 19, 2018.
“Woodland Hills is a community that’s constantly been affected by gun violence,” said Coursey, who helped organize “Stop The Violence” basketball events while working in the district. “It’s a community of wonderful and amazing people. And they shouldn’t keep having to lose young men like this.”
Phillip K. Woods, the former Woodland Hills High School principal now serving as superintendent of Aliquippa’s schools, said he had been group-texting people all day Tuesday about Yarbough.
“It’s devastating when you wake up to a call that one of your former students has been killed,” Woods told TribLive.
Woods brought community members and violence interrupters into the high school while he worked there from 2018 to 2021.
He said violent offenses dropped 60% during his tenure. Guns, though, did claim several students’ lives.
During the pandemic, when church services in the area were restricted, school officials even held a funeral for a student in the high school gym, Woods said.
Woods on Tuesday remembered Yarbough as “a high achiever” and said he kept in touch with the young man through social media. Woods recently provided Yarbough a letter of recommendation.
“His mom worked very diligently to have him in the right position, to have him make the right moves,” Woods said. “Gavin had a plan. And he had his young life ripped away.
“This is definitely not something we saw coming.”
Justin Vellucci is a TribLive reporter covering crime and public safety in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. A longtime freelance journalist and former reporter for the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, he worked as a general assignment reporter at the Trib from 2006 to 2009 and returned in 2022. He can be reached at jvellucci@triblive.com.
