Kooper Davis went to meet Jesus on Monday, December 7, 2020. 

Kooper was born in Hobbs NM on August 9, 2003 and spent his childhood in Lovington before moving to Hobbs with his family, Father Justin Davis, Mother Heather Davis and his younger siblings, where he was an honors student, athlete and student leader. 

Kooper was very involved in and loved being part of his church family as well as being a Christian. 

He was an amazing big brother and had very close relationships with his younger siblings.  

He is survived by his father and mother, Justin and Heather Davis, his biological mother Sarah, his sister Kynlee, sister Kharley, brother Kroy, and brother Kohen, brother Tayton and sister Emara,  multiple grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, teachers, administrators, and coaches.   

In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations in memory of Kooper to be made to Christian Center Church. Help them. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as theyre published. I think the big question we all have is why, and we will never know the reason why, his mother, Katrina Fuller, told an Albuquerque TV talk show in July. This startled me, but not nearly as much as what she told me next: that soon after her own illness, her partner of 18 years, Abe, had died of what had strongly resembled COVID-19, though his initial test had come back negative. The closures have also inhibited young peoples striving for independence, youth mental health experts say. He liked his teachers, and they liked him. how did kooper davis of hobbs die. Students were attending five days a week, without the hassle of hybrid schedules used in much of the country. Kooper was very involved in and loved being part of his church family as well as being a Christian. Its baffling to us to figure out why he didnt come to us.. Florida senator's dopey bill feeds media narrative about GOP, The Part of CNN's Interview With Bill Maher That Trump Supporters Probably Won't Like, Adam Schiff launches into a projection-filled fit of nervousness after Tucker Carlson talks J6 tapes, WATCH: Schumer Threatens Fox, Says He Has 'Right' To Tell Them 'What to Do', New York Times Discovers a New Source of Racism, and This One Could Be the Most Ridiculous Yet, California - Do Not Sell My Personal Information, A state-mandated lockdown of high schools and sports had a tragic impact on one student. Overall, though, the fall was going so relatively well that many students who had chosen the remote option at the outset decided to come back to school, to the point where only about half a dozen were still learning at home. . Sports could start a few weeks after that, with masks and without fans. I knew he was pretty brave, but didnt know he was that brave, Sam said later. Malena Moreno and her boyfriend, Pedro Gavin Garcia, were friends of Koopers from Lovington, New Mexico, where Kooper lived until he was 12. (The mass exposure did not lead to any reported local outbreaks.). Before the event broke up, someone encouraged all of Koopers classmates to get together on stage for a group photo. Were losing their leadership. All Rights Reserved. Junior year was everything: He would be vying for the starting QB slot on varsity and taking a fistful of Advanced Placement courses. In the large band hall, the band director showed me the dots he had taped on the floor to keep the 70-odd musicians spaced 7.5 feet apart even as they marched, and the cloth covers that one students grandmother had made, decorated with the schools mustang logo, to go over the tubas, to keep them from emitting moisture. Its baffling to us to figure out why he didnt come to us., Suicide is ultimately an unfathomable act, but Justin said he was sure of one thing. Lunch was still served in the cafeteria, but it never got crowded because many students went into town for lunch, at the McDonalds drive-through or elsewhere. Our sons, now 16 and 13, have had fully remote learning in their Baltimore public schools for nearly a year now. All Rights Reserved. On Friday nights, high schools still played football, with fans in the stands. Koopers father and stepmother, Justin and Heather Davis, left, and sister, Kynlee, 11. New Mexico mom preserves Christmas tree decorated by son, 17 - MEAWW NBC. They held theirs at the high school football stadium, a hulking edifice that can seat 15,000. The bureaucratic oversight stunned her. He called you., When the service ended, people stayed on for a while to talk and hug each other. You cant republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. In many parts of the country, particularly cities and towns dominated by Democrats, concerns about virus spread by children has resulted in all sorts of measures: closures of playgrounds, requirements that kids older than 2 wear masks outdoors, rigid restrictions on campus life at colleges that reopened. Go deeper Andrew Solender Heather Davis' son Kooper was 17 years old when he died by suicide last year. Few people were wearing face masks. For a while, Kooper went to do some of his schoolwork at the Starbucks near the local Walmart, just to get out of the house, but then it closed down again when state restrictions tightened further. Like Texas, we have to learn to live with it, he said. Jennifer Espinoza got word from fellow teachers, one of whom asked her, Hey, did you have Connor Davis? The name meant nothing to her, but, she asked, did they mean Kooper Davis? Explore the latest videos from hashtags: #hobbsnm, #porterdavishomes . But when he heard the name, Stevens was stunned. He wouldve had an adult standing next to him, a coach saying, Kooper, quit being a dummy. The only way he could make sense of it, Justin said, was that for about fifteen seconds of Koopers life, he let his guard down and the devil came in and convinced him of something that was wrong. His only solace was seeing the effect the loss had on Koopers classmates, who were, he said, turning their lives over to God, sending letters to the governor, and generally spreading word of his sons goodness far and wide.I believe God needed him now, he said. James parents said there were no obvious signs that their son was struggling. For them, the primary release from the hours staring at the laptop screen would be sports, and for us, the answer was clear: My wife and I would let them play. Kooper was despondent. But the players ended up just wanting to go lift weights together. Read the full story. Rigby. New Mexico's Hidden Tragedy: The Suicide Problem Plaguing Our Youth He had won over his ninth-grade English teacher, Jennifer Espinoza, with his willingness to engage on the works they were reading: The Outsiders, Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird., He was very opinionated about why a character did this, or whatever something meant, Espinoza said. Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). She had been writing and calling elected officials and state bureaucrats and finally, with the help of the local state senator, Gay Kernan, had gotten the state to provide some training for local teachers in recognizing youth mental health troubles. He would, in general, be getting to enjoy the experience of being Kooper Davis, a well-liked kid in a small city where the admiration flowed even from the youngsters he helped out at church, one of whom, a 9-year-old boy, was overheard gleefully reporting to his father that Kooper Davis knew his name. So that was the only thing that I can imagine what was going through his head at that time., Hobbs is heavily conservative. Browse Hobbs local obituaries on Legacy.com. Schools in New Mexico partially reopened in February, after being mostly closed for nearly a year. His natural high spirits had carried him through his lifes primary challenge to date, his parents breakup when he was a small child. And Im willing to keep my teammate and classmates in line, minding whatever rules, just so I can be back here doing the stuff I love., Mental health experts struggle to identify a precedent for the challenge this pandemic is producing for many Americans. But they said they were thinking of all the other kids in another way, too. All weve been doing is trying to sell hope and belief to these kids that its going to happen, but at some point, theyre going to quit believing in you.. I reached Justin Davis on the phone that Saturday, after learning of Koopers death from a mother in northwestern New Mexico whose daughter had also struggled with the absence of school and sports. The state, led by Democratic Gov. Im glad we care about this now, but our state was high pre-pandemic, Kelly said. Kooper was among the speakers, which surprised his friend Sam Kinney. The Texas Classroom Teachers Association had nowhere near the sway of unions in other states. He could think of nothing, other than the fact that he had noticed that one of Koopers grades had slipped below his norm. Even more startling was hearing from school administrators about how well the football season had gone the Denver City team made it to the second round of the playoffs and about the great event of the night prior: the holiday band concert. The team in Seminole, 20 miles south, needed to cancel some games as the result of player quarantines, but Denver City managed to get through the fall without any cancellations, though there were some weeks where the roster got thin. No products in the cart. Well, were introducing them to a new society here, and theyre rejecting it.. He charmed classmates and teachers alike with his playful ebullience. They allowed only for elementary-school instruction, and required a district to stay below an average of eight new cases per day per 100,000 residents over a two-week period. You can send your sympathy in the guestbook provided and share it with the family. If normally lighthearted Kooper, despite a loving family and natural gifts, had been struggling so much, what about all the others? Or to put it more broadly: How much of normal youth should they be asked to sacrifice? Despite the cold, two dozen kids, most in their early teens, had come out to the parking lot and were now doing various kickboxing exercises spaced apart and with masks on under the guidance of some martial arts instructors. She had come to bring her teenage daughter to an outdoor kids workout session that had been arranged hastily a few days earlier, after the news of Koopers death. Koopers been Justins rock. She recounted all their morning chats together, after his workout sessions. But Heather and Justin had just had newborn twins. I chatted with some of Koopers teammates, asking them how they were handling remote learning. It has been a difficult balance to strike, on both a societal and family level. Every weekday morning except Wednesday, he got up at 6:30 a.m., drank a protein shake, then drove to McDonalds for more breakfast, before arriving at school at 7 a.m. for a weightlifting session. One of the more heartbreaking conversations that our healthcare workers share is about these last words when children apologize to their parents and grandparents for bringing COVID into their homes for getting them sick, she told the Los Angeles Times. Lea County, of which it is part, would vote 79% for Trump in 2020. Just a few miles away in Texas, students were back in school and teams were playing a full season of games. If you share republished stories on social media, wed appreciate being tagged in your posts. Legacy invites you to offer condolences and . We just have to weigh the good and the bad. No football means no video to show college recruiters. A study in the March 2021 issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, of people aged 11 to 21 visiting emergency rooms found significantly higher rates of suicidal ideation during the first half of 2020 (compared to 2019), as well as higher rates of suicide attempts, though the actual number of suicides remained flat. But he also knew how adolescents had the natural tendency to magnify troubles. I want him to tickle the babies while I go eat, she said. If hes thirsty, give him water, and his interpretation of it: No matter who it is, no matter who the person is, if theyre in need, help them. Students wore masks in the hallways and administrators did contact tracing for positive cases of coronavirus, but everything else went pretty much as usual, including sports. Thanks for signing up. Then the screen played a long loop of photos and videos of Kooper: wearing a Halloween costume, holding his younger sister on the beach, wearing braces, buried in sand, grinning behind Justin and Heather as they kissed at their wedding, attending a Dallas Cowboys game, singing in a school musical, holding a newspaper with his name in a sports story, sitting on a hay bale, holding the newborn twins, wearing a tux for a dance. The younger one would ask why he couldnt get McDonalds, which she preferred, on the way back, and hed explain that traffic made it easier for him to do them in this order. When do we all protest and say this is enough, do we wait until our kids lose life completely? she wrote. Kooper Davis's passing at the age of 17 on Monday, December 07, 2020 has been publicly announced by Chapel Of Hope in Hobbs, NM .Legacy invites you to offer condolences and share memories of Kooper in