A student leader among Harvard College Native Americans who hoped to put his training in economics to good use developing his home community was instead fatally shot there on May 3.

The death of Clarence Duane Meat ’05-’07 was first reported in the Harvard Crimson after a fellow classmate at Harvard, also a member of Meat’s Ojibwe Tribe in Minnesota, was notified by her family.

A later article in the Boston Globe revealed the details of the shooting, which was originally suspected to be gang-related. Meat was shot in the chest while spray-painting graffiti on the south Minneapolis home of a Sureno 13 gang member who, according to a follow-up article in the Crimson, had allegedly harassed Meat several weeks earlier. Police now believe that Meat had no gang affiliations, and that the graffiti was only a “prank.”

Meat was described as a mentor to youths in the close-knit Native American community on Harvard’s campus, who kept Native American music and dance traditions alive and never hesitated to lend a hand wherever it was needed. Meat had been taking time off from his spring semester at Harvard, but planned to resume in the fall for his final semester.