A 22-year-old Hempstead man who was attending college in North Carolina was found shot dead outside his apartment early Sunday morning, Greensboro, N.C., police said.
Dennis Hayle, a senior at North Carolina A&T State University, was found at 3:35 a.m. in a corridor outside his off-campus apartment. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
As of Monday, no suspects were named in the shooting.
Hayle's Facebook page billed him as "Dennis Hayle aka Mr. Long Island." He was a senior at the historically black university, majoring in political science and criminal justice and living off-campus. His family in Hempstead Village could not be reached Monday morning.
The campus was in mourning Sunday and Monday, according to school officials who dedicated the university's Web site to him.
Anyone who visits the main page of the university is greeted by a large photo of Hayle with the message, "North Carolina A&T Remembers Dennis Stuart Hayle."
"The University is heartbroken as the result of what occurred with Dennis Hayle," Chancellor Stanley F. Battle said on the Web memorial page.
By Monday morning there were six pages of messages from his friends and others on the university's memorial Web site.
"Dennis was a man on a mission, living with a purpose. One of the most funny, goofiest, and caring people on the campus," one friend wrote.
Another friend said, "I met 'Mr. Long Island' on the first floor of Scott. He was funny then and every time I saw him, he was still the same person . . . 'Mr. Long Island' will be deeply missed!! RIP Aggie Pride."
Many of the comments said Hayle was intensely proud of his school and his classmates, known as Aggies.
"My first encounter with him was one boring night my friends and I went downstairs in the student union to the arcade area where he was working . . . And he kept screaming "aggie pride" every time he would tell us something," one woman wrote.
Another said, "Dennis was a beautiful, amazing person and he will be greatly missed around A & T although I know he will be watching over us still saying "AGGIE PRIDE IS NATIONWIDE."
The News & Record of Greensboro said the corridor of Hayle's Campus Courtyard apartment building was stained with blood Sunday.
The killing was the third homicide in as many days in the city; neighbors said they heard nothing unusual that night, but also said that gunshots were common and another man was shot in the leg nearby last weekend, the newspaper said.
One friend and former fraternity brother told the News & Record that Hayle was a peer mentor and volunteered to serve breakfast at the Greensboro Urban Ministry soup kitchen.
"He didn't get into it with nobody. I'm so shocked. I don't know what happened," Uche Byrd said. "He had such a bright future... The statistics for minority men aren't good, but he was beating them."
Another of Hayle's friends, writing on the university's memorial Web site, said professors and students were in shock.
The friend wrote, "It's a sad day when a mother can no longer send her son to college, to better himself."
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