Slay victim was 'hardworking'

Tyrone Campbell Jr., or "J.R." as his family called him, always wore a gold dog tag around his neck with the inscription, "Tyrisha's little brother."

Campbell, 20, was on his way to work early Sunday after spending the night at his sister Tyrisha's North Philadelphia house.

"They were like two peas in a pod, those two," said Campbell's mother, Virginia Williams. "Wherever one went, the other one followed."

Before he could get to work, someone shot Campbell multiple times in the chest as he was walking along Dauphin Street near Bancroft shortly before 5 a.m.

He died at Temple University Hospital.

"He had to be at work at 6 a.m. that morning," Williams said. "He was trying to save up enough money so that he could buy a car."

Campbell had been working in the maintenance engineering department at SEPTA since April and was trying to catch the bus to get to the 69th Street Terminal in Upper Darby, where he was supposed to work a double shift, his mother said.

"He was a hardworking kid," Williams said. "Everyone does not just sell drugs these days. My son was doing what he was supposed to be doing."

His family gathered yesterday at his mother's North Philadelphia home on Warnock Street near Brown, desperate for answers.

Homicide detectives were trying to piece together a firm motive.

They said yesterday that a 911 call had come in that a man on a bike was seen leaving the scene of the crime, but as of yesterday they couldn't connect the tip to the crime.

So far, police said yesterday, it seems Campbell was killed by a robber. He was the city's 232nd homicide victim this year.

The likely motive explains nothing to his mother.

"Even if J.R. was robbed, why did they have to take his life?" Williams cried out.

"This family is distraught right now. Trying to have to make funeral arrangments is the worst part of all of this because nothing could ever prepare you for this.

"We shouldn't be making these kind of arrangements. It's unnatural.

"You can't tell me that everything happens for a reason, because this doesn't make any sense. There has to be something better than this."

She called on the leaders of the city to push for tougher gun laws and to take a long, hard look at the state the city is in.

"We need justice," Williams said.

Campbell was an independent man who had had his own apartment since he was 18. He was the family jokester who liked to make people laugh.

Campbell graduated with honors from Camden County Technical School in 2004, where he studied masonry.

He also attended church regularly, his mother said.

Now his parents are left without an intelligent, ambitious son who had already achieved so much.

Campbell's father was at a loss for words.

Surrounded by photos and plaques showcasing his son's short lifetime of accomplishments, he choked out, "It hurts."

"I still am in disbelief," Tyrone Campbell Sr. said. "He meant the world to me."

J.R. had talked his father into getting a cell phone recently.

"I wasn't really too fond of the idea in the first place," Tyrone Campbell Sr. said, "but he said it would help us stay in touch with each other."

His five sisters and two brothers are left without a jovial, caring brother who would regularly visit and call them to see how they were doing.

"J.R. would always be Tyrisha's alarm clock in the morning," Williams said. "That's how she got up to go to work. Even when he was off, he would still call her. The morning after he was killed, she realized he won't ever be able to call her again." *