Jennifer Westbrook, principal of Mount Vernon Exploratory School in North Hall, said Jesse Hinds Jr.’s school community “is very devastated by this loss.”
“Jesse was an amazing, one-of-a-kind boy who touched so many lives around him — adults and children,” Bethany Nix, Mount Vernon’s counselor, said. “He will be very missed.”
Jesse and his father, Jesse Hinds Sr., were killed in a house fire on Smallwood Drive on Sunday.
On Monday, Dec. 2, Nix and Tamara Etterling, Hall’s director of student services, began organizing student and staff support for the week.
“We have a team of folks on hand trained to help our students and staff deal with an event as traumatic as this,” Hall Superintendent Will Schofield said in a press release on Monday.