Kyle Singleton, former mental health counselor and fashion-loving entrepreneur, has died at 30

Editor’s note: This obituary is presented in partnership with the Philadelphia Obituary Project, a nonprofit committed to memorializing city victims of homicide whose deaths have otherwise been overlooked.

Kyle Singleton, 30, of North Philadelphia, a former mental health counselor and owner of a cleaning company and meal-delivery business known for his love of fashion and protective nature, died May 11, after being shot in the 1800 block of North 28th Street.

Mr. Singleton could iron your hair, plan your red-carpet prom party, cook you a salmon-and-asparagus feast, and move your heaviest air conditioner without missing a beat.

A free-spirited jokester, Mr. Singleton enjoyed vacationing from Miami to Mexico, London to Paris.

“I can eat when I get back home,” he told naysayers who questioned his spending habits.

”Everybody would say he was such a ball of energy,” remembered his younger sister, Curtisha Neal Singleton. “All he wanted to do was laugh and have fun and give as much love as he possibly could.”

At 1 a.m. on May 11, he called his mom, Denise Neal Singleton, to let her know he wouldn’t be home that night because he was staying with a friend in Brewerytown. Later, at around 10:30 a.m., Mr. Singleton was fatally shot. No suspects have been arrested.

Born on Aug. 7, 1991, in North Philadelphia, Mr. Singleton was the fourth of five children. The family nicknamed him “Wheezy” due to his severe asthma.

From an early age, Mr. Singleton would dress up, even to go to the corner store — a habit he learned from his stylish father, Curtis. His wardrobe included plaid flannel shirts in the winter paired with jeans that he artfully distressed and ripped, and crisp white shirts in the summer (sometimes with buttons open halfway to his waist). He had a way of making even sweatpants look presentable, pairing them with Nike Dunk sneakers, a button-down denim shirt, and David Yurman accessories.

He did not appreciate his sisters’ dressed-down attire. “You are not coming outside with me looking like that,” he teased one of them.

As a tall, trim student at Simon Gratz High School, Mr. Singleton organized fashion shows, sewing and modeling the clothes. For a time, he considered modeling in Manhattan but instead enrolled in a criminal justice program through the Community College of Philadelphia.

He left CCP after a year and worked as a mental health counselor for 12 years. His last position was at Fairmount Behavioral Health System in Roxborough, where he brought patients his extra clothes, gave them his home number, and calmed them down after they tried to run away.

He was similarly protective of his family, including his three sisters — Curtisha, Desiree, and Deneshia. His older brother, Curtis Jr., died in a house fire when he was 27. Encircling Mr. Singleton’s ring finger was a tattoo of his brother’s signature.

Mr. Singleton would drop everything to help out his nine nieces and nephews — even if he would rather be watching TikTok. When he was out to dinner, he often FaceTimed his relatives until his battery died. For his mother’s birthday in January, the family took her on an epic trip to Las Vegas.

Mr. Singleton learned to cook from his mother, and he would spend an entire weekend in a frenzy trying to fill 500 pre-orders for his meal-delivery business. His signature dish was a garlic-and-butter seafood platter crammed with Dungeness crab legs, jumbo shrimp, corn on the cob, and homemade mashed potatoes. When he wasn’t cooking on the clock, Mr. Singleton snacked on grab bags of gummies and Reese’s, applesauce cups in every flavor, and rolled-up lunch meat.

He had a strong desire to be his own boss. During the pandemic, Mr. Singleton started a cleaning company, In Between Cleaning. Six months before he was killed, he had saved up enough to purchase his dream car, a gray Dodge Challenger.

His mother recalled that one day shortly before her son’s death, the family had been sitting around talking about funerals. Her son said that he did not want the traditional hands folded at his abdomen or any carnations.

Mr. Singleton had meticulously planned all the details for his cousin’s 21st birthday, including exactly what he wore. Instead on that day, the family gathered to bury Mr. Singleton at Chelten Hills Cemetery, his hands rested by his sides, flanked by a thousand fashionable red roses.

A reward of up to $20,000 is available to anyone with information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for Mr. Singleton’s murder. Anonymous calls may be placed to the Citizens Crime Commission at 215-546-TIPS.

Resources are available for people and communities that have endured gun violence in Philadelphia. Click here for more information.