Peace Corps Worker Is Killed by Robbers in Ivory Coast

With just two months remaining in his Peace Corps hitch in west Africa, a 26-year-old volunteer from Ventura was killed this week by intruders robbing his home.

The news shocked those who knew Kevin Leveille, a notably nonviolent man who once put a bell on the family cat to keep it from sneaking up on birds.

“My son loved life,” his father, Paul Leveille, said Friday. “He never had anything bad to say about anyone.”

Kevin Leveille was stationed in the nation of Ivory Coast, a former French colony. He lived in the village of Tanda, near the border with Ghana.

His father said four local people are being held by police in Thursday’s attack.

Although two other Peace Corps volunteers live in Tanda, Leveille lived alone.

Leveille graduated with honors from Ventura High School in 1990. In 1995, he graduated from Humboldt State with honors in environmental engineering.

“I’m proud of my son and I want people to know about him,” Paul Leveille said as he grappled with the tragic news at his east Ventura home. “Kevin had been in the Peace Corps for two years. He’d applied to UC Berkeley for graduate studies in environmental engineering. He was waiting to hear if he’d been accepted.”

In Tanda, Kevin Leveille had worked with the mayor’s office on water and sanitation projects.

Paul Leveille said his son “specifically wanted to contribute to the people of Africa. That’s where he wanted to go. So I don’t have anything bad to say about the Peace Corps. They try to help people all they can.”

Kevin Leveille planted trees at a school in parched Tanda so the students could have shade. “I think he even paid for the trees,” his father said.

Before going to Africa, Leveille had worked at such jobs as boxing groceries at the Alpha Beta market in Ventura. He donated some of his earnings to animal protection groups.

His father said the U.S. ambassador to the Ivory Coast and Mark Gearan, the director of the Peace Corps, had called with their condolences.