Police Investigate WSU Recruit's Death

Sacramento-area police are continuing their investigation into the shooting death of Kyron Vandell, a Washington State University football recruit.

Vandell, an All-American junior college running back, was fatally shot early yesterday outside a Black Angus restaurant south of the Sacramento city limits.

Vandell, 21, was scheduled to enter WSU on a football scholarship as a junior next month.

Police said the shooting was an apparent ``payback'' by a man with ties to the Crips gang who had lost a fistfight at the restaurant to Vandell June 27. Police are searching for the suspect and two companions.

companion of Vandell, Cory Baugh, was wounded once in the foot and once in the leg. At about the same time, a husband and wife, David and Dinah Ray, were wounded in a shooting on the other side of the restaurant building. Police are trying to determine if there was any link between the shootings.

Vandell was shot once in the head with a pistol. He died about four hours later, at 6:15 a.m.

The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office originally announced that the incident was ``gang-related'' and that Vandell ``was associated with the Bloods'' and the suspect with the Crips.

However, police later told Sacramento reporters there was no evidence Vandell was a gang member.

Don Dillon, Vandell's coach at Sacramento's Hiran Johnson High School, discounted speculation that Vandell was involved with gangs.

``I've never known Kyron to affiliate with one group or the other,'' Dillon told The Sacramento Bee. ``He kept all that at arm's length.''

In a prepared statement, Mike Price, WSU head coach, said Vandell ``was an All-American player and an All-American person.''

``It's just a tragedy,'' Price said. ``He had worked his whole life to get where he was. It's amazing something like this would happen to him.''