Hank Silverberg, wtop.com
WASHINGTON – Police are searching for the motive in the stabbing death of a former high school star who is being remembered as a man who always smiled and got along with everyone.
Zavier Stringfellow, 19, of Manassas, was a high school All State Football player and member of the 2010 Battlefield High School State Championship Team.
He was stabbed to death during a struggle in what Fairfax County police are investigating as a possible robbery. Johnny Bonilla, 22, of Gainesville, has been charged with Stringfellow’s murder.
Stringfellow was found dead in a minivan on a service road off of Chain Bridge Road near Glengyle Drive in the Vienna area on Dec. 28.
Police say the two men did not know each other, but had arranged some kind of a meeting that night.
Stringfellow was a sophomore at Ferrum College in southwestern Virginia, where he was a linebacker on the football team.
His coach at Ferrum, David Harper, says Stringfellow was well-liked on both the football team and on campus.
“At six o’clock in the morning we’re in there lifting weights and he’d be in there smiling,” says Harper. “He never had a bad attitude about anything.”
On his Facebook page, where his friends are now leaving condolence messages, his sister calls Zavier her best friend who got along with everyone.
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