A former El Camino basketball player was shot and killed earlier this week, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

According to the press release, Wendell Lee, was standing on the 12200 block of Elva Avenue with a female companion around 11:45 p.m. last Monday, when a four-door vehicle approached them and a man got out of the drivers rear side and shot Lee in the upper torso.

When officers arrived on scene they found Lee with multiple gun shot wounds. Paramedics took Lee to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.

“He was gunned down like a dog,” Pastor Gabriel Burgos, from Rock of Hope Church, said.

Burgos has known Lee since he was about 6-years-old and Lee would play piano for his church.

“He had a dream. He wasn’t your average kid that grew up in South Central. He loved to play basketball, it’s sad because he was right there. From my understanding he got picked up by an organization the Lakers own,” Burgos added.

Mike Fenison, former El Camino basketball coach, said that Lee played for EC from 2009-2010.

“He was a pretty good athlete and his team mates loved him. He got along well with everyone, he was kind of a jokester,” Mike Fenison said.

Fenison described Lee as jokester and he shared one of his favorite memories with him.

“There’s this one day at practice, it was him, me and a couple of other guys and he goes, ‘I’m a better shooter than Ray Allen,” Fenison said. “I started laughing like, ‘Ray Allen? He’s in the league, and you’re trying to get there. But to have such confidence, that was him. You knew he was on a mission to get to wherever he had to be.”

Lee was known for his basketball talent, but to many he was something more.

“When we had first met, he embraced me like he had known me for years. Like I had been his friend forever.” Sebastian Spencer, 25, journalism major said.”He was a truly genuine person, he was so much more than basketball.”