Friends and loved ones gather for the funeral of Eddie Irizarry, shot and killed by a Philadelphia Police officer

As rain clouds hovered in the morning sky, dozens of Eddie Irizarry’s family and friends gathered Thursday in North Philadelphia, just a few blocks from where a Philadelphia Police officer shot and killed him last week.

They’d convened in the streets of this neighborhood many times since Irizarry, 27, was shot while sitting in his car Aug. 14. They’d called for accountability from the city and the Philadelphia Police Department and demanded that Officer Mark Dial face criminal charges for killing him. They’d demanded answers about why police initially misrepresented the circumstances of the shooting that claimed his life, contending that he was the aggressor and wielded a knife.

But this day was about remembering and honoring Irizarry’s life. On this day, the man they affectionately called “Junito” would be laid to rest.

Inside Christ and St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, they remembered the best of him: the way he protected his family; the care he brought to each car he worked on as a mechanic; his love for reggaetón and riding dirt bikes.

Many of those who gathered wore shirts saying “Justice for Junito” and bearing his photo as they came together to say their goodbyes.

The funeral was a first step toward closure for the family, whose days have been filled with grief, anger, and confusion since his death amid the rapid fire of police bullets earlier this month.

The police account of how he was killed changed drastically the day after the shooting, prompting a wave of questions and concerns about his death, and anger and frustration from Irizarry’s family, who’ve maintained from the start that he was never a threat to police.

And surveillance footage released this week by a lawyer for the Irizarry family shows that Dial shot him within seconds of their encounter.

The encounter began about 12:30 p.m. Aug. 14, when police initially said two uniformed officers with the 24th Police District saw Irizarry “driving erratically” near B Street and Erie Avenue in North Philadelphia.

Police first said that when the officers attempted to pull him over, Irizarry fled in his gold Toyota Corolla. They said they followed him south until he stopped on East Willard Street. As officers approached the stopped car, Irizarry stepped out with a knife, police said. Officials said that the officers gave “multiple commands” for him to drop the weapon, but that he “lunged” at them, and that one officer then shot him multiple times.

About 30 hours later, after officials reviewed the body camera footage amid questions from Irizarry’s family and reporters, police retracted that narrative. In a new version, they said Irizarry never lunged at police with a knife, and it was unclear whether he was even holding one. In fact, they now say, Irizarry was shot while seated in the driver’s seat of his car.

Irizarry’s funeral comes the day after a news conference during which Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw announced that Dial would be fired for insubordination after refusing to cooperate with the department’s internal investigation into the shooting.

Outlaw declined to say whether she thought the shooting of Irizarry was a crime, saying the investigation was ongoing. And she did not answer questions about the origins of the initial erroneous narrative, saying only that it came from an “internal source.”

Irizarry’s family has said Outlaw’s decision to fire Dial was not enough. His aunt, Zoraida Garcia, said the officer who killed Irizarry should go to prison. The family has said it plans to file a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city and Dial.

At the funeral Mass, Irizarry’s sister, Leslie Ann, draped her arms around her sisters, Aransis and Maria. They spoke of their brother, and thanked all who gathered in support of their family and his memory.

As they moved forward with their lives in his absence, they said they would hold in their hearts the memory of Irizarry as a young man who was always smiling — not the painful video of his final moments amid a hail of bullets.

“We don’t take that image,” Leslie Ann said in Spanish, motioning to his casket. “We take the image of who he was.”

She choked back tears and looked out at the crowd of mourners lining the pews. While this ceremony marked a final goodbye to Junito, she said, this was not the end of their battle — they would not give up pushing for answers about how he met his death.

”We’re going to keep fighting,” she said in Spanish — “for justice.”

The family draped a white cloth atop Irizarry’s casket, across it the Greek alphabet Alpha and Omega — the beginning and the end. It was rolled out of the church, accompanied by a crowd of loved ones.

Outside, one relative revved up a blue-and-yellow ATV that Irizarry’s father said his son had fixed up in a garage. Then another stepped into a white Jeep.

As the hearse carrying Irizarry’s body headed toward Magnolia Cemetery, the Jeep, with speakers and subwoofers in the rear, followed closely behind. It rolled up North 6th Street, then turned east, all the while blasting the song “Mataron A Un Inocente” — “They Killed an Innocent Person.”