University of Delaware Student Shot, Killed

Police say 20-year-old was shot at off-campus apartment complex

The University of Delaware was in mourning Tuesday after a student was shot and killed overnight at an off-campus apartment complex where a student was killed seven years ago.

Pete DiSabatino, 20, was shot in the chest in a courtyard of the Studio Green Apartment Complex on Thorn Lane in Newark just before 9:30 Monday night. Neighbors heard the gunfire and ran outside in hopes of saving his life.

"Me and my brother Aaron immediately start doing first aid, giving him CPR, mouth to mouth," said neighbor Dylan Brady. "I take the shirt off my back and put it on the bullet wound to keep pressure on the wound. We kept him alive until the ambulance came."

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. Doctors pronounced DiSabatino dead at the hospital.

"I'm still in shock, in disbelief," said DiSabatino's childhood friend Dalton Church.

DiSabatino was a graduate of Appoquinimink High School who was in UDel’s associate of the arts program in Wilmington.

His family and friends gathered at the apartment complex Tuesday night for a candlelight vigil where DiSabatino's father asked for the assailants to give themselves up.

“We’d appreciate it if they came forward," said Thomas DiSabatino. "Obviously this person or persons doesn’t value human life enough that they need to be removed from society before they cause someone else some pain and maybe take another life.”

New Castle County Police had only vague descriptions of the student's killers only saying that they were black men in hoodies. Police gave no motive for the shooting.

DiSabatino was shot at the same apartment complex where death row inmate James Cooke Jr. raped and murdered UDel student Lindsey Bonistall in her apartment more than seven years ago. The complex was called Towne Court Apartments at the time of Bonistall's death.

Anyone with information on DiSabatino's murder should call police at 302-395-8110.

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