Devin Weedon, 15, was laid to rest amid a plea for justice and an end to the city’s gun violence

Gary Weedon was stoic, his gait steady as he strode toward the pearly white casket that held the body of his youngest child: 15-year-old Devin Jahmer Weedon — another one of Philadelphia’s children stolen from their family by a person with a gun.

At Deliverance Evangelistic Church on Tuesday, Gary Weedon approached the casket and leaned over his son’s body, admiring his handsome face. He took a breath, and then he began to speak.

“I love you son,” he said. “You made me the man I am today. You made me a better thinker.

“I’ll always have a piece of you in my heart,” he said. “Every day, I’ll look at your photo hanging on the wall, and I’ll tell you good morning, and that I love you.”

He kissed his son’s forehead. Then he turned back to his family, to steady his wife and children, who approached, one by one, and nearly collapsed at the sight of Devin — their athletic baby brother who always gave hugs and got to school on time — now lying cold and still.

Devin’s body was dressed in an embroidered crimson suit jacket and pleated black pants. His hands were covered with white gloves. He wore studded black loafers and a silver watch on his left wrist that shimmered beneath the lights of the church.

Last Tuesday morning, as Devin walked from the subway station toward his high school, Simon Gratz Mastery Charter, four young men approached him from behind in what police believe was an attempted robbery. They jumped him, police said, and when Devin tried to protect himself, one of the assailants shot him in the chest.

He died at the hospital a short time later. No arrests have been made.

Devin was a sophomore at Simon Gratz and member of its football team. He was an uncle to eight nieces and seven nephews, and the youngest of 10 kids — five brothers and five sisters. He was on the honor roll and aspired to open a gym for young athletes.

“He played by the book, by the rules, and tried to stay out the way so stuff like this would be avoided,” his brother Aaron, 18, said inside the church.

But in Philadelphia, mourners at Devin’s funeral said, that’s not always enough to keep a child safe from a violence crisis fueled by deep poverty, a proliferation of guns, and a dearth of hope among young people. The result is a city losing young people at an unsettling rate, in all places and at all times of day: Leaving a school football game. Riding their bike. Playing basketball.

And in Devin’s case, walking to school.

So on Tuesday, as dozens of people filled the pews of the North Philadelphia church to pray and weep and celebrate his life, they also expressed raw frustration with the state of the city.

“Turn yourselves in,” Gary Weedon pleaded to his son’s killers.

Then, he turned to the crowd: “We put people in office, and they’re doing nothing. When are they gonna stop this? Is it gonna take people in the neighborhood, men like me and y’all, to take back our streets?”

Councilmember Cindy Bass, who represents parts of North Philadelphia, said parents in the city must step up.

“No more privacy,” Bass said. “Whoever shot Devin, that gun was likely in somebody’s house the day before. … We have got to get into those rooms and run through them. Flip those mattresses and run those drawers.

“Because at the end of the day, Devin was where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to be doing,” she said. “He should not be here. He was on the right path.”

After Devin’s siblings Nyah and Aaron placed a gold crown atop his head, the family surrounded the casket and pulled a white shroud over his body. His mother and father, in a final tender moment, carefully tucked him in.

His brothers loaded the casket into the hearse, which stopped outside the family’s West Philadelphia home before it was loaded into the back of a white horse-drawn carriage. The horse then escorted him through his neighborhood for one final time, before arriving at Fernwood Cemetery in Landsdowne.

Nyah Burnside draped a blanket with her brother’s photo on it atop the casket. Then her brother spoke again.

“He was 15,” he said. “He didn’t have a job. He didn’t have a career. All he had was love.”

Together, the family raised their red roses in the air, before placing them on the casket. Wytina Burnside leaned over, and whispered final words to her baby: “We love you so much.”

Slowly, the coffin was lowered into the ground. Gary Weedon briefly walked away.

“I can’t see my son go down,” he said quietly.

But then he walked back and stood behind his wife and children, watching silently as they sprinkled Devin’s favorite candy into the grave.