A family is left reeling after an ambush in Kensington leaves a man dead while protecting his son: ‘I’m fed up with Philadelphia’

Mario Olivera died protecting his 1-year-old son.

He was carrying the child in his arms as he headed to his mother’s home in Kensington on Wednesday evening when he was ambushed by two gunmen who pulled up on a red scooter and fired more than 20 shots at him, police said.

Olivera, 24, was later pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital. His son, named after the father who protected him to his last breath, was in stable condition after suffering cuts from debris or bullet fragments.

Olivera had just left a bodega across the street from his mother’s home in Kensington with his son, Mario Jr., cradled in his arms, when shots rang out, his mother, Carmen Batista, said Thursday.

As Olivera crossed D Street, she said, he was struck by bullets. Instinctively, he moved to protect his child, she said, placing him on the porch of his mother’s home and putting a chair over his small body to shield him from the gunfire. Then he collapsed to the ground.

Olivera’s death has shattered his family, Batista said Thursday morning.

“This is part of the violence we’re living with in Philadelphia,” she said in Spanish, breaking into tears. “I’m fed up with Philadelphia. I’m fed up.”

At 6:21 p.m. Wednesday, police on patrol in the area were flagged down and directed to Batista’s home on the 3200 block of D Street, police said. When officers arrived, they found Olivera unresponsive on the front porch of the house, with gunshot wounds to his head and thigh. He was taken to Temple Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:46 p.m.

Surveillance camera footage shows two people riding a scooter south — the wrong way — on D Street and then opening fire on Olivera, police said. The scooter then turned and fled north. Neighbors later told Olivera’s mother that the assailants drove around the block three times before the ambush, seemingly waiting to attack her son, she said.

The motive for the shooting was unclear, police said, and there have been no arrests.

Olivera had pledged to start down a new path in his life after a stint in prison for selling drugs, his mother said. He had gone to school to become a mechanic and was working at an auto body shop, she said, focused on being a father to his three children and building a home with his wife.

After Batista recently moved to D Street, her son visited often and was painting the inside of her new home on Wednesday, she said.

“My son had left behind the streets,” the mother said.

Surrounded by her family Thursday morning, on the steps where her son had died hours earlier, Batista prayed that investigators would find and capture the people responsible for his death.

“They killed my son,” she said. “But they also killed an entire family. They killed the life in me.”

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call the Homicide Unit at 215-686-3334 or to call or text the police department’s tipline at 215-686-8477. A $20,000 reward is being offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.