Da’Juan Brown, the youngest victim killed in Kingsessing shooting, died trying to save his wounded friend, family says

When Da’Juan Brown heard the gunshots, his family said, he ran toward them, not away.

The 15-year-old had just returned from playing basketball Monday evening, and was hanging out with his cousins and friends at his grandmother’s house. It was shortly before 8:30 p.m., with dusk just falling across the neighborhood, when a few of his best friends walked to pick up snacks on 56th Street.

Minutes after they’d gone, Da’Juan and the others heard gunfire coming from that direction.

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Da’Juan had already lost too many loved ones to shootings, his grandmother Odessa Brown said, and went to make sure his friends were OK.

“I gotta go see about my mans,” Brown said he yelled as he ran off the porch.

His older cousin tried to hold him back, Brown said. But Da’Juan pulled away from his arms. He ran up the block onto 56th Street and found his 13-year-old friend on the ground, shot in the leg.

“His friend told him to go, run, and get help,” Brown said. “But he couldn’t outrun the bullets.”

Before he could find help, Da’Juan was shot multiple times in the chest, one of seven people shot at random Monday night in what officials say was one of the deadliest mass shootings in Philadelphia’s history. Police say Kimbrady Carriker, dressed in full body armor and armed with multiple guns, including an automatic rifle, walked throughout Kingsessing and shot at anyone who moved.

As Da’Juan lay in the street, his family rushed to his side. His grandmother can’t recall whether shots were still ringing out when she took her grandson into her arms.

“All I know is I was getting to my baby,” she said.

She held him, she said, until police arrived and rushed him to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died shortly after. Da’Juan’s injuries were severe, the devastating result of an automatic rifle fired at close range by a man who officials say never should have had access to weapons in the first place. In all, officials said, Carriker fatally shot five people and wounded two others, and two people were injured by shards of glass.

Da’Juan — known by family and friends as Juan Juan — was born on Sept. 21, 2007. As the middle child of three, and one of 19 grandchildren, he had a tight bond with his siblings and cousins.

He had just finished up his freshman year at Jules E. Mastbaum High School in Kensington, though he spent most of his life growing up in South Philadelphia, near 26th and Tasker Streets, Brown said.

Da’Juan was a happy child. He was always dancing and playing jokes on his family, and his grandfather, whom he called “Pop Pop,” loved to take him to the park. They often fed the ducks in the pond together, until one afternoon when Da’Juan stepped too close to a pair of geese, and they chased him around the park.

“He was just screaming, and we was laughing,” Brown said.

When Brown moved to Kingsessing five years ago, she said, her grandson would frequently come over to stay the night. He was eager to see his friends in the neighborhood, she said, and get away from the gun violence near his mother’s home in South Philadelphia.

“It was a new start,” she said. “He came here to live, to get away from the violence. And he still wound up dead.”

Brown said her family has been deeply affected by gun violence over the years. In one recent year, four of her relatives were fatally shot, she said, and Da’Juan had recently lost a few friends.

Despite the loss, Da’Juan kept a bright smile across his face, she said. He loved making TikToks with friends, and never left home without wearing the freshest outfit and sneakers, and he often borrowed his grandmother’s clean socks to complete the look, she said.

He was always talking to girls, too, she said, and frequently had more than a dozen cousins or kids from the neighborhood on her porch, hanging out after playing basketball. He played point guard, she said, and his goal was to get a basketball scholarship for college.

“He was that guy,” she said.

Wednesday night, Brown and a few relatives gathered inside Salt and Light Community Church, alongside at least 150 others community members grieving the tragedy. Feeling the embrace of her neighbors, she said, brought a brief moment of comfort.

“Don’t give up on God ‘cause He won’t give up on you,” echoed attendees.

In the pews was Karen Gleason, the sister-in-law of Ralph Moralis, 59, who was also fatally shot on Monday night.

Gleason said she was heartened by how quickly victims’ families and the community rallied to support one another. It started the first night at the hospital, as she waited with what felt like hundreds of other relatives of victims.

“Everybody was all together to comfort and support each other,” she said. “Even though they were dealing with their own grief, they still gave comfort and support to everyone else. It was really a moving experience and very emotional.”

After the prayer service, many of those who attended walked the sprawling crime scene, across Chester Avenue, past Frazier Street and then down 56th Street. They stopped at each memorial in the collection of makeshift tributes that spanned the neighborhood.

At one memorial, a young man sat sobbing into his knees on the curb of South Frazier Street. A few stopped to comfort him.

Odessa Brown walked on, and paused briefly by the memorial for Da’Juan. But she couldn’t stay long — being in the place where he was taken from her was still too much to bear.