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Philadelphia Neighborhood Remembering Former Northeast High School Football Player Gunned Down Over Weekend

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A Philadelphia neighborhood is remembering another victim of the city's gun violence epidemic. Twenty-year-old Emmanuel Sowell was a former football player at Northeast High School and was gunned down over the weekend.

A balloon release for this grieving family who only wants to hold on.

"I'm still in disbelief and I can't really explain how I'm feeling because, in my mind, he's still here," Jurnee Mowery said.

On Tuesday, loved ones of Emmanuel Sowell gathered at Max Myers Playground in his memory.

The 20-year-old was a student-athlete on a full scholarship at Delaware Valley University.

"A Black man out in these streets doing that, he was not like that," Thalia Doe said. "He went to college. He graduated high school, honor student. Great child. Just loved everyone and for someone to take his life, it just wasn't right."

Someone shot Sowell five times on the 500 block of East Cornwall Street just after midnight on Saturday.

"He was home from school. He was receiving his clothes at his mother's house," Doe said. "He left her house at 11:45 that night, and a half an hour later, he was pronounced murdered."

Officers found Sowell in a white car. Three of the shots were to his chest.

"His mother and his father and his siblings just want justice for him," Doe said.

Before going off to college, Sowell played both basketball and football at Northeast High School.

His childhood friend hoped to see where his talent would take him.

"We really was waiting, rooting on the side what his outcome would be later on in life," Mowery said, "but unfortunately, God cut that short."

Sowell joins at least 168 people who have been killed in the city so far this year.

His family is unsure why he was in Kensington in the first place.

For a list of gun violence resources in Philadelphia, click here.

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