On Saturday October 27th, 2007, lives were changed forever when Donald “Donnie” Farrell headed to a connivence store. The store was the XPress Food Mart near the Triad dormitories at Rowan University, located just off-campus in Glassboro, New Jersey. It was 9PM and he was with a group of friends. The store was well-lit, believed to be safe by many in Rowan University community.
But inside the XPress Food Mart, a robbery was underway when the group arrived. The robbers ran into Donnie and the group on the way out. According to one report, one of the suspects spoke to Donnie and asked for directions. Then he attacked him from behind, savagely beating him on the sidewalk while fleeing from the scene of the crime.
He was pronounced dead of blunt force trauma to the right side of his neck the next day.
Donnie was 19.
The group who held up the connivence store and murdered Donnie has never been found. Donnie’s death remains unsolved, despite a $100,000 reward and surveillance footage of the murder suspect widely-circulated in the New Jersey and New York metro areas.
In 2009, two years after the incident, NJ.com laid out a number of identifying details to hopefully bring Donnie’s killer to justice:
This, despite a $100,000 reward and despite a surveillance picture from the Glassboro convenience store security camera showing the main perpetrator in his blue-and-gray Coogi Heritage jacket and Yankees cap.
This, despite a detailed description: black or Hispanic male, medium complexion and rounded facial feautes, braided hair, a thin mustache and light goatee, approximately 20 to 24 years of age, standing about 5-feet-7.The jacket may be the key. Only 50 — yes 50 — were made in that style, and they were sold in only 20 stores in the New York-New Jersey metro area. The New Jersey stores were in Jersey City, Elizabeth and Plainfield.
He’s on it, plain as day, buying something, exchanging money with the store clerk, then coming back to write something down.
Plain as day. The thing he was writing down? His phone number for a woman he met in the store, though police think she quickly discarded it. Still, there is so much to go on. Here are two new public pieces of information.
One is the nickname “Smoke.”
“A witness has told us one of the suspects either referred to himself as ‘Smoke’ or was called ‘Smoke’ by the others,” said Sgt. Langdon Sills of the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office.
The second piece is about the car the suspects may have been driving.
“A witness told us the suspects were near a four-door late model Honda Accord and there were females in the back who were either Hispanic, white or light-skinned African-Americans,” Sills said.
On the night Farrell was killed, there was a “Step Party” hosted by one Rowan’s fraternities, which drew kids from other colleges in New Jersey, including Kean and Montclair, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
The step party was just one of two events that may have brought North Jersey kids to Glassboro that night. Rowan hosted Montclair State in football that day.
The $100,000 reward still stands.
—
Donnie grew up in Boonton, New Jersey and play high school lacrosse at Mountain Lakes, also in Morris County. At Rowan he was a founding member of the school’s club lacrosse team. The Men’s Club lacrosse team at the school continues to go strong to this day.
This year, member’s of the club lacrosse team decided it was time to do something to remember Donnie.
Our team heard about this murder and was disgusted at not only the fact that it happened, but at the fact that there is no place on campus to remember him. Our lacrosse team is a family. A family of which all players, both past, present and future, demand the same respect.
To show our respect to Donnie, and his family, we decided that we needed to give back, that we needed to create a place where Donnie will live on forever.
So they’re throwing a lacrosse tournament in his honor on ‘Lax For Donnie’ on April 19th. Using GoFundMe, they’re raising funds to frame a jersey to give to Donnie’s family and to start a scholarship in Donnie’s name. In addition, the lacrosse team hopes to install — with the approval of Rowan University’s President — a small marble memorial dedicated to Donnie at their lacrosse field.
It’s the very definition of a Bro move for a lost Bro. I asked the Rowan Bro who is organizing the campaign and tournament for some more information. He hit me back with a list of objectives:
The objective for the Lax For Donnie are:
1) Get Donnies story out and tell the world who he was.
2) Raise money to create a scholarship in his name.
3) Find the murderers so Donnie’s family has closure4) Have people realize life is short and to live it to the fullest.
Those are damn good goals.
RIP, Donnie. May Donnie never be forgotten at Rowan and may his family and friends someday find the peace they deserve.
To read more about Donnie, check out The Donnie Project. To donate and read more about Rowan University’s Lax For Donnie tournament, check out the GoFundMe campaign… The campaign ends on April 1st.