An 18-year-old was set to start his first job this week. He was shot and killed overnight in Strawberry Mansion.

Even as Philadelphia is on track to record the fewest homicides in half a century, shootings continue to devastate families in pockets of the city that have long been beset by violence.

Kingsessing. Kensington. Cobbs Creek.

And early Tuesday in Strawberry Mansion, when 18-year-old Said Butler Jr. was shot and killed just days before he was expected to start his first job.

Butler was on the 1900 block of North 31st Street in Strawberry Mansion shortly after midnight when at least two people approached him and shot him multiple times, said Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore.

Seeking help, Butler ran down the block and jumped a fence into a neighbor’s backyard, but his injuries were severe. He died at nearby Temple University Hospital at 1:10 a.m.

Vanore said that it’s not clear why Butler, who grew up in the Crescentville area, was in Strawberry Mansion on Monday night, and that investigators are still searching for suspects and a motive.

“It could be a robbery, could be some type of argument, we just don’t know,” he said.

For Butler’s family, the only truth is heartbreak.

“He was my son,” Butler’s father and namesake said Tuesday. “And his life was just beginning.”

Butler was the third of four children, he said, but was strong and confident in a way that made it seem “as if he was the older brother even to his 27-year-old sister.”

Butler, known by friends and family as “Saddi,” was tall and lean, just like his father, and he was a natural on the basketball court.

He attended Universal Creighton Charter School, and then briefly Samuel Fels High School, before transferring to YouthBuild Philly Charter School. He struggled with school for a bit, his father said, but “made a whole 360″ before his senior year, and graduated in the spring.

His family was so proud.

The elder Said Butler, who works as the main cook in a nursing home, said his son had recently applied for a job working alongside him in the kitchen. The father said that he got an alert Tuesday that his son’s background check finally came through and that he could start working this week.

But hours earlier, he was killed in a section of the city long crushed by dueling crises of violence and poverty, and in a police district that has recorded the second-highest number of shooting victims in the last 10 years. Still, so far this year the 22nd District has recorded a 47% decline in shooting victims compared to just three years ago, when the gun violence crisis reached unprecedented heights.

And yet, for each person affected, the pain remains the same.

The 43-year-old father stood on the steps of his Crescentville home Tuesday and reflected on how, when he bought the home 13 years ago, his son was one of only two children on the block.

He stared out into the street, his eyes red and swollen, as if he could still see him playing in the grass, chasing laughter that now felt so distant.

Staff writer Dylan Purcell contributed to this article.