At school, Rajaan Bennett was the senior with the shiny future — the honors student and star running back who led his Georgia high school team to its first undefeated season.

He’d just gotten a full scholarship to Vanderbilt University. He wanted to be an architect.

But at home, Bennett was the man of the family. And that is where a gunman with a grudge against his mother found him, police say. The 18-year-old with hopes of someday providing for his family died protecting them. He summoned help when he, his mother, younger sister and his uncle were under threat.

Sometime after midnight on February 18, his mother’s former boyfriend, Clifton Steger, 39, came to the woodsy, two-story stone house in Powder Springs, Georgia, with a .22-caliber revolver in his hand, police say. Upset over a recent breakup, he forced Bennett, his mother and sister into a bathroom. They brought a phone with them and Bennett called 911.

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