Last month, the Loyola Lycée in Los Angeles celebrated Braun Levi Senior for having moved into the best national ranks of boys tennis.
The 18 -year -old won another victory just a few days ago, winning the Double Mission League championship. In a photo, the radiant Levi stands next to his teammate Cooper Schwartz, holding four fingers – one for each of his four consecutive championships in double in the league.
These achievements were to be a little a balm for the Levi family, coming only a few months after their home in the Pacific palisades burned in the January storm of fire. The family had moved to South Bay.
He felt beyond understanding, when the director of Loyola, Jamal Adams, sent an email to students and staff of the Catholic Jesuit school on Sunday to inform them that Levi had been killed in a traffic accident a few hours earlier, a month before his graduate of secondary school.
“Braun was a brilliant presence in our Loyola family,” wrote Adams, “bringing light, joy and inspiration to all those he touched.”
The director invited the Loyola school family to a prayer vigil on Sunday evening of the campus. “All the members of our community are invited to join us while we meet in unity and memory,” wrote Adams.
Police from Manhattan Beach said they stopped a 33 -year -old Los Angeles woman suspected of drunkenness and homicide in connection with the accident, which they think occurred after midnight on Sunday morning.
A brief press release from the Department only said that a call came at 12:46 p.m. on a traffic accident involving a pedestrian in the 100 South Sepulveda Boulevard block. They found the victim, which they did not identify, lying in the street.
The police press release said Jenia Belt de Los Angeles was arrested in the accident. The belt stayed in Manhattan Beach prison on Sunday, a police supervision said.
Friends have doubled Levi's social media account with tributes to him. Levi was to attend the University of Virginia in the fall.
“Whoever got to know you know how lucky they are,” said a message. “You have never met a foreigner and you have left an impact on everyone you met. I will live and love as much as you every day. ”
Said another: “Whether you had the chance to meet with him for an hour or a life, he left an impression. It was impossible to be sad or bored whenever Braun was there, and his gift to lift those around him was really singular.”
Levi's social media images refer to prototypical education in southern California. He waded in a high lake of the Sierra with his family, his arm in arm with friends on the beach, posing for a selfie with actor Adam Sandler and swinging a pink costume and a Fedora next to a race on horseback.
Barely two years ago, another student-athlete of Loyola High died in the last weeks of his career in high school. Ryan Times, a launcher from the baseball team, was struck and killed by a train in April 2023, when the school was on spring vacation.
Brian Held, coach of the Loyola university tennis team, called Levi, a three -year -old captain, “probably the most decorated player to play for school”.
Held also taught Levi in economics and statistics AP. “We are all amazed, devastated and the heart broken with this tragedy,” said by e-mail. “Braun was the most astonishing and most versatile leader, whom everyone loved, even his opponents. He was just this type of child – unique and special. As one of his teachers, I saw how he brought joy to everyone.”
Levi is survived by his parents and an older sister.
Staff writer Eric Sondheimer contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
