Parents struggle with shooting death of their son

Joel and Cherlynne Seay worked hard to protect their youngest son from the dangers of their West Philadelphia neighborhood.

Each morning, Joel drove Jarell Seay to a private academy in Montgomery County, 30 minutes away. He earned good grades, and he excelled at sports and music, his principal said.

Graduation day would have fallen on Jarell's 19th birthday. He was considering technical colleges, military service, or working full-time in his father's contracting business, his family said.

But just as the family finished Easter supper Sunday evening, Joel Seay saw his son's life end in a burst of gunfire when a gunman shot Jarell on the porch of the family's home on the 1300 block of North 55th Street.

Two people had knocked on the front door moments earlier. Joel answered it, and Jarell went outside. After a brief exchange of words, one of them shot him in the chest. He was pronounced dead shortly afterward.

Police have provided no motive in the shooting, and no arrests have been made. One of the fleeing suspects dropped a cell-phone, and investigators recovered part of it.

Monday morning, Jarell's parents struggled to make sense of the killing of their son, whom they called a good kid who stayed away from trouble.

"We have no idea why anyone would want to hurt that boy," Joel Seay said, sitting on his couch with his wife, surrounded by grieving family and friends.

Seay said he had never seen the killers before. They looked a little older than his son, he said, and one, who had his back turned, had a tattoo of rising flames on his neck.

Seay stood on the porch as the killers whispered to his son.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he recalled his son saying to them.

Jarell turned to walk inside and the tattooed man took out a gun and fired, Joel Seay said.

"It happened so fast, I couldn't even dive in front of my boy," Joel Seay said. "I couldn't protect him."

"Blood was coming of his mouth," he said. "He was biting his tongue. I stuck my finger in his mouth to try to clear his tongue so he could breathe. A neighbor came running and started CPR."

In tears, he added, "I just couldn't get him back."

Both Joel and his wife, Cherlynne, work: Joel in his construction business; Cherlynne as an office administrator in the University of Pennsylvania department of medicine.

Jarell started high school at Overbrook, but two years ago, his parents transferred him to Wyncote Academy, with about 70 students.

He was a well-liked student, known for his sense of humor, said Kirk Hittinger, Wyncote Academy's head.

Joel Seay would sometimes bring his son lunch on days he forgot it, Hittinger said, and Cherlynne would call weekly, checking on her son's academics.

Jarell was a standout forward on the basketball team. He spent his free time in the school's electronic studio, recording music. He recently finished a 25-page term paper on the history of the Internet, Hittinger said.

Amber Townsend, 18, who grew up with Jarell and asked him last week to her Spring Fling, said he wanted a career in music or computers and planned to work for his father in the meantime.

She speculated that his killers may have been tracking down someone else.

Monday would have been Jarell's last day of spring break, and Joel Seay said he and his son often prayed during their rides to school.

Now, he said, he is praying for his son's killer to be captured.

"He was going to be a champion in life," he said of his son. "He just didn't get a chance to show it."