Graduation & gunfire: Student shot in back minutes after ceremony

KHIRY CALDWELL did his homework, stayed out of trouble and pumped gas at a neighborhood service station. It was all in anticipation of yesterday, when the 18-year-old walked out of Temple's Liacouras Center with his diploma from Strawberry Mansion High School, and with college on the horizon.

He didn't make it even one block before he got shot on the city's rough-and-tumble streets.

Luckily, the bullet that struck Caldwell in the back - fired during a brawl between a large group of young men from Strawberry Mansion High that erupted outside a fast-food joint on the same block as the arena - did not cause life-threatening injuries: It cracked a rib and bruised the grad's lung.

The Graduation Day shooting also gave yet another black eye to Philadelphia, which is struggling to bring down its sky-high murder rate - and which is still reeling from Sunday's murder of a 23-year-man who came to the city from Minnesota to teach math and was apparently shot for his iPod.

"Somehow, some way, this has to stop, these shootings," Amin Caldwell, the young grad's father, said last night. "We have to help the babies."

The father said that when his son woke up at Temple University Hospital, where he was taken after the 4:15 p.m. shooting, he said, "Tell my mother I love her."

Last night in the hospital room, Amin Caldwell said that his son was in high spirits and cracking jokes with family members and friends who crowded about. The youth joked about wanting a cheesesteak, his father said.

But doctors told his father that Khiry, who is expected to fully recover and be released in a couple of days, is not allowed to sit up.

"Due to his back injury, they want him to lay down, but he's moved his arms and legs," his father said. "They took the oxygen mask off and he has no fever, no blood pressure."

Meanwhile, at the Liacouras Center, parents and other graduates mingled nearby after the shooting, taking pictures, holding hands and telling jokes, not allowing the crime-scene tape or stone-faced cops to intrude on the joy of commencement for Strawberry Mansion and two other Philly high schools.

Rich Lee, whose son Brandon graduated from Martin Luther King High, said: "For him [Caldwell] to get shot at his graduation, it's a shame."

Caldwell was one of 117 Strawberry Mansion grads who received diplomas at a commencement exercise that started at 2 p.m. at the Liacouras Center and broke up around 3:55.

Twenty minutes later, according to police, six or seven young men got into a fight outside of the Wendy's a couple of doors south of the center, which is on Broad Street between Cecil B. Moore and Montgomery avenues.

Temple police tried to break up the brawl, but one of the young men pulled out a gun and started firing, with one of the stray bullets striking Caldwell.

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said that the fistfight and the shooting were the result of a long-standing beef among the young men. Five suspects were taken into custody.

A gun wasn't recovered, but investigators found three shell casings at the scene. Detectives were reviewing surveillance footage from Temple and nearby businesses, and cops were searching subway platforms and canvassing the area for other suspects.

"It was supposed to be a day of celebration, but it ended up in a shooting," Ramsey said when he visited the crime scene.

Those who know Caldwell said that the young man had a lot to celebrate.

Lois Powell-Mondesire, the school's principal, visited the youth at the hospital. "She described him as a very good student, a very good kid," said school district spokesman Fernando Gallard.

"We're very shocked that this happened. He already had plans to go to college," possibly to Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., Gallard added.

The student's father said that Caldwell works more than 32 hours a week at a neighborhood Sunoco station as a gas attendant and stays out of trouble.

The senior Caldwell said that he left the graduation festivities ahead of his son and found out by phone that the youth had been shot. "I immediately started praying," he said.

So far this year, 147 people have been slain in Philadelphia, a number that's down considerably from last year's pace. But seemingly random acts of violence continue to cause terror.

Amin Caldwell said that his son harbors no ill feelings toward the shooter.

"He wasn't mad. He was only worried about his mom and dad, he said, and expressed disappointment, asking: 'Why would someone bring a gun to a graduation where there are women and children?' "

Caldwell said that he's not surprised by his son's reaction. A practicing Muslim, the youth was named Khiry, which means "charitable," his father said, adding that he has lived up to that.

"[Khiry] is about love and peace," he said. "We don't want any revenge. We don't want trouble." *