He was the person you called when something needed doing. Not later. That day.
Devaughn “Deezo” Wright Pita was a loving father, son, brother, cousin, and friend from Oʻahu. Family remember a man who was smart in every direction, quick with a joke, an athlete whose energy could turn a room. He fished with his brothers. He drove a used BMW he was always in the middle of fixing. He had a four year old son.
His mother, Cecilia Pita, said it without poetry because she did not need any: “You tell my son to fix anything, to do anything, Devaughn's gonna get it done.” She called him her to go guy. Loved ones called him Mr. Fix It.
That is the man his mother still talks to in the kitchen. The one who hung the closet, jumped the car, made the joke, showed up for the kid.
A whole village around him.He loved having fun. He loved his people.
He loved having fun. He loved the water. He loved that boy.
Cecilia wanted the world to know that part too, not only the headlines. He went fishing with his brothers. He liked a good time. He was twenty three, which is another way of saying he was still becoming himself, and already the person a whole family leaned on.
August 9, 2025 · Wahiawa
He went because someone needed him.
That Saturday he had just finished repairing his mother's closet. Then he was asked to help the mother of his son leave an unsafe home on Navy property in Wahiawa. He went. He got out of the car to protect her. He was shot. He died of his injuries. He would have turned twenty four five days later, on August 14.
The family has asked for transparency, answers, and accountability. That work continues. This page is not the case file. This page is the life, so that when people search his name they find a son, a father, a mother's boy who showed up, not only a shooting on a federal installation.
“We will not let Devaughn's life be forgotten.”
Laid to rest at Nuuanu. The people who loved him are still here.
His mother Cecilia, his son, grandma, aunties, siblings, cousins, friends who will tell you he was one of a kind. Deezo's World is how she keeps that love in motion, a table for anyone else who has had to bury someone they cannot stop talking to.
