The Fourth of July weekend was a tough time for crime in the City of Brotherly Love. A mass shooting left 10 injured, including three minors, and another three victims dead. One of the victims, 24-year-old Azir Harris, survived a drive-by shooting in the area when he was just 17. The incident left him in a wheelchair, but he lived life to the fullest. Now, his family is grieving the life they fought so hard to save just a few years ago.
Troy Harris told Fox 29 that Azir Harris used a wheelchair following the first shooting incident in 2019 but remained active and was the father of a 1-year-old boy. When he left the house on July 7, Troy Harris fully expected his son to return.
“I figured they’d either go to the store, get some juice or something like that, never thought he’d be on the other side of town when that happened to him,” the father told Fox 29. “When he was in the wheelchair, I was carrying him up and down the steps. I carried him when he was a baby. I carried him through his first incident, and I couldn’t pick him up this time.”
Sadly, Azir Harris died from injuries received at a mass shooting on Philadelphia’s South Side. The mother of his child also was shot but survived. Per Fox 29, police said gunfire erupted at an impromptu block party. More than 100 shots rang out in the street, striking homes, cars, and multiple victims.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel addressed the media in an early morning news conference and called the actions of the shooters “wannabe thug stuff.” He said he doesn’t understand why individuals engage in such a manner but said investigators will bring the suspects to justice.
“We had a significant level of violence over the weekend, but we can see our trends are not heading in the opposite direction. We will not go back to the times when we had 500-plus homicides. That is not happening,” Bethel said during the news conference.
Troy Harris hopes the people of Philadelphia will heed the police’s call for peace and put down the guns.
“I just want to say put these guns down man, there’s a better way to solve it, there’s a better way to solve it,” he told Fox 29.
