Family 'Heartbroken' After Phila. City Employee Shot, Killed Outside Parent's Home
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- For the family of 25-year-old Leonard Boyer III, Saturday was supposed to be like any other weekend. It wasn't anyone's birthday, no specific reason to gather, other than to just be around one another.
That was the plan.
"It was just a normal Saturday to come down, bring the baby to see us and have a laugh and joke like we normally do," said Leonard Boyer Jr. "We really had no plans, it was just a normal day."
At 5:00 p.m. on that day, the family heard shots. Police say as Boyer was walking to his mother's door on the 600 block of N. 12th Street, two men fired 13 times, hitting Boyer twice in the head and once in the back. By 8:30 p.m., he had died at Hahnemann Hospital.
"To everybody else, he's Leonard, to me he's my Pooh, that was my Pooh Bear, and nobody had the right to take him from us, or his daughter," said Boyer's mother Claudine. "What do we tell his daughter when she's asking for her dad? What do we tell her?" Boyer's daughter is 2-years-old.
Boyer has worked in the City Commissioner's Office, training election board officials and out in the community by helping to register people to vote. On Tuesday, Commissioner Al Schimdt told Eyewitness News in a statement:
"Leonard was a dedicated city employee. He had a strong work ethic and was always available to help the public whenever we needed him. The pain his coworkers are feeling right now is evidence of how good a person he was."
Boyer's death is among Philadelphia's five for the past weekend and the 183rd for the year, compared to 167 this time last year, according to the Philadelphia Police's Homicide Unit.
