Friends and family mourn Oxford Circle boy gunned down last week
Vigil held Monday for 11-year-old gunned down last week in a double shooting in Oxford Circle.
Friends, teachers, and family paid their respects Monday to one of the youngest Philadelphians killed this year, gathering at the Oxford Circle park where he was a fixture.
The victim, who was identified by police Monday as Harley Belance, was remembered for his outsized personality and the bright smile he almost constantly wore as he greeted the staff at the Max Myers Recreation Center.
”In his short life, he taught me a few things,” Stephanie Perez, one of those workers, said. “And all I can hope is that I taught him some things, too.”
Belance, 11, was shot Friday evening on McKinley Street near Large Street while riding a motorized scooter with a 14-year-old friend, according to police.
When officers arrived at the scene for reports of gunfire, they found Belance on the ground, shot once in his neck, police said. He was taken to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, where he later died from his wound. The other boy wounded in the shooting, whom police did not identify, was shot in his right arm and right ankle.
Monday’s vigil drew about 50 people, all of whom praised Cerette Joseph, his mother, for raising a kind, outgoing son.
Suzanne Hatcher, whose son Christian was close friends with Belance, said news of the shooting had stunned her. She couldn’t believe, she said, that the boy who spent so much time in her home would no longer come running through her front door.
“As soon as he came into a room, he lit it up,” Hatcher said. “I’ll miss him, and so will this whole neighborhood.”
Investigators said they weren’t sure whether the two boys were the intended targets of the gunman. A man was seen firing from steps near a home about a block away from where the boys were hit on McKinley Street. Witnesses told police that alleged gunman ran west on McKinley toward Castor Avenue.
» READ MORE: Boy, 11, fatally wounded in Oxford Circle double shooting
No arrests had been made in the shooting as of Monday evening.
Tributes to Belance, a fifth grader at Gilbert Spruance Elementary School, poured in over the weekend.
City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, in a statement, said her “deepest sympathies” went to the Belance family.
“We have to create a Philadelphia where Black kids have the freedom to just be kids — away from danger, and trauma, and bullets,” Gauthier said. “Anything less is unjust.”
Belance’s slaying comes amid a spike in violence against children in the city. As of March 9, children had been the victims in about 10% of Philadelphia’s 117 homicides this year.
On the night of Belance’s death alone, nine other people were shot in Philadelphia, including a mass shooting of seven outside a sports bar in Fishtown, according to police. Of that group, two were under 18.