Death inspires commitment to stopping violence

College, former neighbor seek anti-violence action in memory of Derek Olivier

Published: December 15, 2012

By Aprille Hanson
Little Rock Correspondent

Arkansas Baptist College football head coach Richard Wilson stands next to the grave of freshman football player Derek Olivier Dec. 2 in Louisiana. A petition has been created at change.org to convince the city of Little Rock to implement an anti-violence program in Olivier's honor.

Tera Pearson said she remembers her 19-year-old former neighbor Derek Olivier as an old soul.

"Derek was just ... sensitive, kind, a loving spirit," Pearson said. "About 1,500 people attended his funeral. They say the measure of a man is by the number of people who attend your service."

On Sept. 27, two days before his 20th birthday, Olivier, a freshman cornerback for Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock and a Louisiana native, was fatally shot across from campus while helping a friend change a tire. Police have made no arrests.

"This was not a typical gang-banger, black-on-black crime," Pearson said. "This should have never happened. I don't want him to be a statistic."

On Nov. 16, Pearson started a petition on change.org, urging Gov. Mike Beebe, Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola and Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas to continue following leads in Olivier's homicide and to create a new anti-violence program in the city called, "The D.O. Campaign."

Pearson said she hopes the program would be modeled after criminologist's David Kennedy's book, "Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and The End of Violence in Inner City America." According to the petition, his program has been tested in more than 70 inner-city areas, reducing violence in predominantly black communities.

"The system is devised to help (reduce) black-on-black crimes," by educating inmates and helping them transition back into society to end the violent cycle, Pearson said. "(It helps) rehabilitate these people ... to show that there is a way out."

Growing up in the southern Louisiana town of New Iberia, Olivier was never exposed to the types of crimes that occur in bigger cities, Pearson said.

"This has never happened, we're a small neighborhood, country folk," said his father, Joseph Olivier Jr. "We're in an uproar."

Instead of burying themselves in grief, Olivier's parents have thrown their full support behind the petition, to bring change to Little Rock in their son's honor.

"The program is to get a lot of gang members, violent people to come together to teach them it's time to stop with the guns," said his mother, Alma Olivier. "Our son was killed for no reason."

Olivier was a devoted Christian, raised Catholic at St. Nicholas Church in Lydia. Joseph Olivier said he still remembers a conversation he had with his son before going off to college, when he suggested that he join the U.S. Army like his cousin.

"The first thing he said to me that still haunts me is, 'I'm not going anywhere where anyone's going to shoot at me,'" Joseph Olivier said.

Alma Olivier said the petition will also make sure her son does not become just another stereotype.

"He wasn't a thug, he didn't believe in violence," his mother said. "He was going to college to major in criminal justice."

The petition has gathered 507 signatures, but the number was set at 92,712. Pearson does not expect to get that many signatures however -- it's symbolic of Olivier's death date, 9/27/12.

"It will be up for a year," Pearson said of the petition. "Every time a person signs the petition, the governor, mayor, the police, the board of directors get an e-mail."

The grassroots effort has already produced results. Pearson said she has been in contact with the Little Rock Police Department and hopes for more information soon.

While Pearson, an independent sales representative for Aflac insurance, said she's helped with fundraisers for those in need on a smaller scale, but in Olivier's case, "God put it on my heart."

"This is not for me, it's for Derek and his family," Pearson said. "It's to give him a voice."

Whether or not a change comes from the petition, the administration at Arkansas Baptist College is going to make sure the freshman is not forgotten. During a staff trip to visit Olivier's family in Louisiana on the first week in December, college president Fitzgerald Hill announced plans to unveil the Derek Olivier Research Center for Black on Black Violence in February as part of the school's Urban Community Leadership Program.

"We are going to expand the program to look at the issues relating to violence and what are the factors that are causing these continuous problems," Hill said in a Dec. 2 article published in The Daily Iberian. "Like Derek, these are senseless acts of violence that happen for no reason. He was offering a helping hand and now his family is without a loved one. It happens every day in the United States of America, unfortunately."