15-year-old Sunny Ravi Patel was shot and killed by Daveion Perry in October, during a robbery at his family owned Mr. Hero in Cleveland Heights where he worked.
Soon after, the community started a Go Fund Me page.
Donations poured in from all over to cover funeral expenses.
$40,000 was raised.
Then something unexpected happened.
Still grieving their loss, the Patel family offered their own act of generosity.
So thankful the killer was caught, Sunny’s family donated all of the money.
$20,000 to the Cleveland Heights police and fire departments for their training academies.
Sunny’s dad said they donated the rest of the money to Mayfield High School, where their son was a student, to start a scholarship in their son’s name.
Ravi Patel says it’s his family that is thankful to the community for an outpouring of support.
“I am really grateful. I really appreciate everybody, I don’t know personally, but I’m going to tell them thank you, thank you, thank you,” Patel said.
Some of the money will also be used to build a spirit shop at the high school in Sunny’s name.
“When you think about Sunny, and just his demeanor, his personality, we wanted to make sure we honored him, and we couldn’t think of something more fitting, then creating this spirit shop, just symbolic of him and his character,” said Jeff Legan, principal of Mayfield High School.
Perry is serving a life sentence for killing Patel.
