14-year-old Kareem Haynes was shot yesterday as he talked to some girls near 29th and Cecil B. Moore Avenue. Police say a teen approached, asked if Haynes was the one who'd sucker punched him earlier, then pulled a gun and fired it.
Hayne was shot in the neck.
"The victim got up, stumbled down the block and collapsed a block away at 29th and Nicholas," said Captain Joe Bartorilla.
He did not survive.
Today, officials from the Kelley School, where Haynes graduated from 8th grade in June, embraced his mother.
"I just don't understand how they would get to this, to respond to one another like this, to react to one another like this, I don't understand it," Kelley School Parent Ombusdman Vorlea Chaney said.
Police say the suspect, whose nickname may be Gotti, rode off on a silver bicycle wearing a purple hooded sweatshirt. Investigators believe he's about 14-years-old and may have mistaken the victim for the person who hit him earlier in the day.
"Now he's not here no more. It's a shame. So much killing. What's wrong with these people out here?" Bubba T. Jackson of North Philadelphia said.
It's clearly difficult to accept that the boy who loved cooking, sports, and fixing bikes was gone.
Friends say Haynes was preparing to enroll at Roxborough High School.
Those holding vigil outside his family's home, cannot make sense of the tragedy.
They only hope the young killer is caught.
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