Kless' life was cut short Saturday when, police said, three men beat him to death on the steps of the historic Second Bank of the United States on Chestnut Street. His assailants smashed his head against a low granite wall in front of the bank building.
The 23-year-old native of Warwick, N.Y., died shortly afterward at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
On Sunday, police continued their search for the assailants, who apparently attacked Kless after a misunderstanding over hailing a cab. No arrests had been made.
"It's so senseless, such a tragic waste of a wonderful young man," his mother, Kendall Kless, said in a telephone interview from their home in Orange County, N.Y.
The youngest of three boys, Kless graduated from Temple's Fox School of Business with a degree in risk management and insurance.
At Temple, Kless was involved in the Sigma chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma, an international professional fraternity whose members include risk-management and insurance majors, said R.B. Drennan Jr., Kless' former professor and the fraternity's faculty adviser.
Drennan said Kless had recently left his first job out of college with an insurance firm in Harrisburg and had taken a position in the Philadelphia office of Marsh, a major insurance brokering and risk-management company.
"It's quite competitive to get a job at Marsh. That's a feather in his cap that he was able to do that," Drennan said.
Drennan called Kless "a good ambassador for the program."
"Had this not happened, he would have continued to have a successful career. I have no doubt about that," Drennan said.
