Playing with gun, Phila. teen killed cousin, 15, police say

A Southwest Philadelphia man was charged with murder yesterday after he shot his 15-year-old cousin, an aspiring sportswriter and basketball player at Bartram High School, police said.

Kasey Chambers of Southwest Philadelphia was pronounced dead Monday evening after he was shot in the head, near his neck.

Charged with murder and related offenses is his cousin, Zachary Smith, 19, who was playing with a handgun that discharged while the two were sitting in a car near their homes, said Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman. Smith told police the shooting was accidental, Vanore said.

Smith, a student at Community College of Philadelphia and the father of a 2-year-old son, ran off but returned a short while later. He approached a 12th District police officer and said he was involved with the shooting, Vanore said.

Yesterday, a stream of friends and relatives visited the shooting scene at 59th Street, near Elmwood Avenue, where a memorial of teddy bears, candles, and the message "Gone, but not forgotten" remained.

Antonio "BC" Walker, 28, said that Kasey was like a little brother to him and that he was teaching the teen basketball moves a half hour before the shooting. He was shocked to hear of the death.

"I'm still in denial," Walker said. "I kept calling his cell phone. All I wanted to hear was, 'What's up, BC?' But the phone just clicks to the answering machine."

At the teen's home, loved ones tried to comfort his parents, Carol and Khanhi, and four siblings who recalled Chambers as the kid everyone loved.

He was quick to help with the dishes at home and called his mother relentlessly if she wasn't home to make sure she was all right.

Monday night, Carol Chambers, 49, a custodian at Haverford College, was home talking with her older son, Khanhi Jr., when they heard the commotion outside. Her son ran out first, and she followed him around the corner, where they found Kasey slumped inside a Nissan Maxima that Smith had borrowed from his mother, the family said.

Chambers said she shook her son, hoping he was alive, as Khanhi Jr. took hold of her, fearing the worst.

"Mom, I think he's dead," her son said, as she cried out, "No, no, not Kasey, not Kasey! He was a good boy."

Chambers said she and her husband, Khanhi, 48, a nurse at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, were told that Smith had been in the car "clowning around" and pointing the gun at two friends in the backseat.

One of those friends, she said, pushed the gun away, and that's when the weapon discharged. Smith, she said, apparently did not know there was a bullet in the gun.

Chambers said Smith should be held accountable for killing her son, who was to celebrate his 16th birthday this weekend, recently made it onto Bartram's basketball team, and had lined up a job at a local sneaker store.

"He had no reason to have a gun," Chambers said as she sat in her son's second-floor bedroom, which was decorated with pictures of his favorite basketball players and of Malcolm X and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "What was he doing with it?"

Her son, she said, was an "A" student who wanted to be a sportswriter. Relatives said Chambers also spent time on the Internet, where he had a MySpace page. For his birthday, Chambers said, she bought him a new pair of sneakers and was going to take him shopping for a new hooded sweatshirt. Instead, she said, she'll dress him in the new hoodie and sneakers for burial.

"I just want him to be happy, to have what he wants," his mother said.