A 22-year-old was killed just over the city line in Upper Darby. That might have helped his family’s quest for answers.

Amir Parks was a 22-year-old new father who was shot and killed near Cobbs Creek Park in August 2020. He was loved, friends and family told me. He was missed. He mattered.

But when it came to Parks’ death, answers were mostly hard to come by for those who knew him best. And there was this mystery: Why wasn’t Parks mentioned on the official list of Philadelphia’s 499 homicide victims in 2020?

Maybe the police had misidentified him or even misspelled his name, I thought, hardly an uncommon error in a city that averages more than a homicide a day.

After double and triple checking the list with the police, an answer. His loved ones were right; he had died around the woods along Cobbs Creek, in the 6500 block of North Church Lane not far from Marshall Road.

But that was about the length of a football field beyond the Philadelphia city line in Upper Darby Township, a section many misidentify as being part of Cobbs Creek.

What no one realized then was how crucial those 100 yards would be in his family’s quest for justice.

In 2020, when Philadelphia was just shy of 500 homicides, Upper Darby had 10.

Of all the homicides in Philly in 2020, only 210 were solved, or about 42%‚ typical in a city where a majority of murders are unsolved.

By comparison, nine of the 10 homicides in Upper Darby that year have been solved, including last month when police arrested a 20-year-old man for killing Parks.

Kelly Ann Coughlin, Parks’ former teacher at Harding Middle School in Frankford, said she was grateful to get some clarity about what exactly happened to Parks, whom she knew as an affable sixth grader who was part of her class poetry club, and whom she long kept in touch with.

“I still have some of his writing,” Coughlin said. “He was awesome, and funny, and just, like, my bud.”

Parks’ cousin, Shamiese Parks–Gunagan, who grew up in Frankford, said that she feared the case would never be solved.

“I thought it was a done deal,” she said. “I said, ‘You know, he’s gone, and we’re never going to find out how it happened or what happened.’ A lot of young kids are killed and they’re gone one day and then you don’t hear about it.”

That is not a feeling — that is a fact that thousands of friends and family live with every day while they hope and pray and wait for answers.

According to police, Parks was killed while illegally trying to sell guns to a potential buyer — a trade that Parks–Gunagan said she believes her cousin took up in a desperate attempt to support his family.

Parks left a note on his phone shortly before he was killed: “Just in case something happens this is the person in the car.”

“Broke my heart reading some of the details,” Coughlin said. But she was grateful to the police for their work — especially Detective Matthew C. Rowles, whom she called to thank.

“I wanted him to know that I really appreciated him not giving up on his case,” Coughlin said, “and that Amir was a good kid who made some stupid mistakes before the end of his life.”

The last two years have been difficult for the family. Parks was cremated, and several family members wear lockets containing some of his ashes. In May, friends and family held a balloon release in his honor.

Despite the pain, Parks-Gunagan said, her family is aware that although they lost Amir, they’ve gotten some answers — which is something that too many loved ones of too many murder victims may never receive.