EDITOR'S NOTE

Why we wrote about every child killed by gunfire in Philadelphia last year

Nancy Phillips is the editor of the Inquirer’s Justice & Injustice team.

Amid Philadelphia’s ongoing gun violence crisis, nearly two dozen young people under age 18 were killed last year in shootings, which have become the No. 1 cause of death for American children.

To examine this toll, The Inquirer set out to tell the story of these young victims and to chronicle their too-short lives. Journalists spent months talking to families, friends, neighbors, and others to learn about these children whose promise was extinguished by bullets.

Grieving families shared memories and photographs, invited reporters into their homes, to vigils, memorials, funerals, and burials for their loved ones.

Inquirer reporters also interviewed police and prosecutors and reviewed court records and other documents to try to learn what led to the crimes, many of which remain unsolved — an all-too-common resolution to homicide cases in Philadelphia.

The result of this effort is a heartbreaking portrayal of the toll that gun violence has taken on the city’s most vulnerable young people — and a poignant remembrance of children gone too soon.

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