One West Philly gang is connected to at least 30 shootings. These were four of the youngest victims.

One was weeks away from graduating high school, another had just earned his driver’s license. Talented athletes and genuine friends, some were their mothers’ only children.

Kanye Pittman. Tommie Frazier. Kaylin Johnson. Nasir Marks.

All were shot and killed by members of a West Philadelphia-based gang known as the Young Bag Chasers, or YBC, prosecutors said. In the last year alone, law enforcement officials estimate that 30 people have been shot and killed in cases related to feuds involving YBC. The bloodshed goes back years, spans across the city, and has affected people who had nothing to do with the disputes.

» READ MORE: How one brave 18-year-old helped solve 4 murders and convict a West Philly gang

And when police make an arrest, families have to sit through painful court proceedings, listening as prosecutors describe the slayings in disturbing detail. It can sometimes feel as if the life lost is overshadowed, said Cydney Pope, who prosecuted the four teens’ killers.

“I think about it all the time, how we lose the victims in a case,” Pope. “You know the defendants and everything about them. But the victims don’t get mentioned but a few times at trial. Yet we’re all here for them.”

These are just a few of the many lives stolen and families shattered by these shootings.

The smallest moments turn Brenda Barksdale’s world dark.

That’s what grief does — it sneaks up at the most unsuspecting times, shattering everyday moments and dulling life’s milestones.

For Barksdale, the mundane routine of grocery shopping has forever changed. She used to relish going to the market and picking up food for dinner for her children. Her 18-year-old son, Tommie Frazier, loved her cooking — her homemade fried chicken, baked mac-and-cheese, and salmon over rice — and she enjoyed the time they spent together at the dinner table.

But after he was shot and killed in July 2021, she said, she can no longer bring herself to shop for food. She’s gone into a supermarket only twice since he died — and both times she picked up just a few items before running out in tears.

“Every aisle I went in, I saw something that reminded me of him,” she said.

Now, she uses grocery delivery services or relies on family.

Frazier, 18, was shot and killed while riding in a car with his childhood best friend, Kaylin Johnson, in Southwest Philadelphia. They were on their way to basketball practice.

Arshad Curry and Raheis Sherman were convicted of the crimes. Curry later admitted that he was targeting a rival gang member, but accidentally killed Frazier and Johnson, who had nothing to do with the feud.

A senior at Simon Gratz High School, Frazier spent most of his life in West Philadelphia and was one of four children. He played basketball at the Christie Rec Center in Cobbs Creek, and was known as the jokester of his friend group, Barksdale said.

“A lot of people say they child is such a good person,” Barksdale said. “But I know my son was a good person. I know my son left such a good impression on everybody he encountered.”

Whenever Barksdale, a preschool teacher, finds herself overwhelmed with grief, she thinks of what her son would want.

“I think of him and feel like he’s there, giving me strength,” she said, “telling me, ‘Mom, stop crying, it will all be OK.’”

Kanye Pittman’s 16th birthday was six months away, but his mother was already weeks into organizing a big celebration for her only child.

Then suddenly overnight, she was planning his funeral.

Kanye, a 15-year-old freshman at Benjamin Franklin High School, was a goofy, bubbly teen who left many of the neighborhood girls smitten, said his mother, Shani Pittman. He was a dedicated friend, often asking his mother to let those who had trouble at home or faced homelessness stay with them. She always said yes.

He loved playing Fortnite and had grown a following on YouTube for posting recordings of himself playing games and offering tips. He played football and boxed, and although he liked to dance, he wasn’t very good at it. “He couldn’t catch the rhythm,” Pittman joked.

Kanye spent most of his childhood living near 55th Street in Southwest Philadelphia, inspiring his nickname, Baby Five. When he was in his teens, he and his mother moved to North Philadelphia. He was always home by his 9 p.m. curfew, she said, so when he didn’t return the night of May 25, she knew something was wrong.

Just before 8 p.m., police said, Kanye was talking with a friend near the 2500 block of North Sydenham Street when three members of YBC shot him multiple times. Zaire Crawford, Semaj Nolan, and Yaseam Miles were convicted of the shooting and sentenced to decades in prison.

The night her son died, Pittman packed her belongings and abandoned the home she loved out of fear. She’s been living with family in New Jersey ever since, returning to the city only for work and struggling to find a new place of her own.

Police have said it’s not completely clear why YBC targeted Pittman. His mother’s understanding is that Kanye had gotten into a fight with a cousin of someone in the group and beat him up pretty badly. They wanted revenge.

In the aftermath, group members have mocked him in songs and flooded his and his mother’s Instagram with cruel messages.

“Every little song they made or mentioned my son in, they sent it to me,” she said. “Who raised them?”

“A 15-year-old lost his life over nothing,” she said. “And now other kids lost their life, too, because they’re in jail.”

Nasir Marks was supposed to be the first in his father’s family to go to college.

Two weeks away from graduating from Overbrook High School, he was set to attend Kutztown University in the fall. His family could not have been more proud.

He’d spent the evening of May 25, 2021, practicing a speech for his senior project in front of his family when he got dressed and headed out to see his girlfriend, who lived a few miles away in Mantua.

But not long after he stepped off the bus at 39th and Poplar, he was shot multiple times. It was a case of mistaken identity, prosecutors said — the shooters, Crawford and Nolan, mistakenly thought Marks was a rival gang member.

But he was far from it.

Marks was quiet and shy, said his sister, Aliyah Robinson. He was most comfortable at home, playing video games or watching a movie with his girlfriend, she said. He was helpful to his parents, too, always offering to do chores around the house, or visiting his grandfather to mow the lawn and take out the trash.

He was lefthanded, and played baseball for an Overbrook team, usually at first base, shortstop, or pitcher.

Her favorite memory, she said, was teaching him how to drive the year before his death.

“That was the time we got to spend just with us,” she said.

She often thinks about what their adult relationship would have looked like — once the years of sibling bickering had passed and they were in the same phase of life.

“Would we get to go out together, and do adult things together?” she asked. “I always wonder.”

When Emily Johnson learned she was pregnant with her first child, she was not prepared to be a mother.

After a difficult childhood and abusive relationship, she did not want to have a child at that point in her life, she said, and tried to distance herself emotionally from the baby growing inside her. But once her son, Kaylin Jahad Johnson, was placed in her arms, she said, everything changed — from that moment forward, he was and always would be the center of her world.

As Kaylin, better known as K.J., grew up, he and his mother remained inseparable. They would shop or go to sporting events together, and whenever K.J. had a football or basketball game, his mother was in the stands cheering him on. He was Johnson’s only child, and after cycling through the foster system growing up, she promised herself she would never miss out on spending time with him.

K.J., a student at Boys’ Latin Charter School, was born and raised in West Philly, and community members said everyone in the area knew him and loved his “big personality” and energy. He played football for Boys’ Latin and the Overbrook Monarchs, and basketball at Christy Rec Center and the West Philly YMCA.

He was headed to practice the day he was killed. He died alongside Frazier, his childhood friend.

K.J.’s death is felt daily by those who knew him, such as his cousins Kaiya and Stanley Newell. They can still hear K.J.’s voice saying “I love you,” and when Stanley attended his high school prom last month, he wore cuff links with K.J.’s photo on them.

Emily still feels her son around her every day. For the first two years after his death, she thought her life was over. Then, she was blessed with another child. She named him Ryder, after K.J.’s favorite hobby of riding dirt bikes, and he turned one earlier this year.

Together, they visit K.J.’s grave often, cleaning the dust off the headstone and always reminding him that he is loved — and forever a part of their family.