‘Why my baby?’ asks the mother of a 12-year-old boy shot dead in Frankford

Lisa Clark pointed to the shattered glass of her front door, pierced by a bullet that killed her 12-year-old son in their Frankford home early Sunday.

“They shot through here,” she said, pointing to the glass arch at the top of the door. Her son was shot when he looked to see who was outside after someone knocked on the door and called out his name, she said.

Clark, 36, said she was out on a date at the time, but was sent a video from her 10-year-old daughter, who was home at the time with her son, Sadeek Clark-Harrison, and the children’s grandmother. “My daughter videoed me and showed me Sadeek laying in a pile of blood,” Clark said.

“I came here,” Clark said, crying on the front porch of her home on the 5000 block of Ditman Street. When she went inside, she said, “I seen my baby laying on the floor. I tried to do CPR.”

But it was too late. Her son was pronounced dead by medics who arrived at the home.

Police said the shooting happened about 2:50 a.m. Sunday, and officers found the boy lying on the living-room floor by the front door suffering from a gunshot wound to the forehead.

No arrests have made, and police did not offer any new information on the shooting or say whether they believed the boy was targeted. One 9mm fired cartridge casing was recovered at the scene, police said.

Clark, however, said she believed her son was targeted. “They had to know him to call him by name,” she said. She said Sadeek was sleeping but her mother woke him up when she heard someone calling his name outside.

The only people home at the time, Clark said, were her 73-year-old mother, her 10-year-old daughter, and Sadeek. She said her mother described the sound of the person outside as “an older guy’s voice.”

Clark, who has five children, said Sadeek, the youngest of her four sons, was in sixth grade at Warren G. Harding Middle School.

“He loved riding his bike, loved playing with his friends,” she said as she hugged a jacket of his that she found on the porch. He also played football and was a wide receiver for the Frankford Chargers youth team, she said.

As she wept, she looked at photos of him — as a baby, a toddler, and preteen — taped on the red bricks of her rowhouse. One paper taped to the wall said, “I Love U lil deeky So Much” and described him by the letters of his name as Successful, Amazing, Determined, Excellent, Excited, and Kind.

“Why my baby?” Clark cried aloud, leaning against the brick wall of her home.

Neighbor LaToya Andrews said she heard the gunshot early Sunday when she was upstairs in her home. Her 13-year-old daughter heard a knock on a door, she said.

“He was a nice kid,” Andrews said of Sadeek Monday. “He was mainly just out here fixing bikes, playing with his friends,” including her three daughters.

In a statement, the School District of Philadelphia said Monday: “We are deeply saddened by the passing of Sadeek Clark-Harrison. We extend our heartfelt condolences to his family and everyone in the Harding school community, keeping all who know and love Sadeek in our thoughts and prayers in the difficult days ahead.”

Clark’s family and neighbors held a vigil Monday night for Sadeek outside her home.