Diane Adams coaxes three of her son's friends toward his still-unmarked grave at Philadelphia's Greenmount Cemetery. Would they like, she asks softly, to tell him anything?

I love you, dog.

You was like a brother to me.

We love you, Kareek. Rest in peace.

This visit last month, which began with a prayer circle, has not gone badly.

Kareek's cousin Larry, who had been dragged from the grave sobbing on other visits since the August murder, is only weeping quietly today. Before disbanding, the visitors manage to smile as they listen to Kareek's rap music, saved on their cell phones.

Which is ironic, because it was a rap contest, Diane Adams says, that started the argument between Kareek, 16, and the 18-year-old being sought in the fatal Frankford shooting.

"My son loved to rap and challenge people," Adams says. "I told him, 'I want you to stop battling, because some people can't handle things.' The grudge came in because my son beat him rapping... and one thing led to another."

Kareek Adams was one of 24 young people - ages 3 to 17 - who were killed by gunfire this year in the eight-county Philadelphia region.

Nearly half appear to have been killed mistakenly - in gun accidents or by assailants aiming at others.

Almost all the rest were shot because of jealousy or perceived disrespect, or disputes over turf, drugs or girls.

"Is it just expected for the children to kill each other with guns?" asks Israe Gilliard. In July, her nephew Jarrett Gore, 15, was preparing to settle an argument with fists when he was shot by an acquaintance.

Long after rain washes the blood from the sidewalks of the city, after kids are placed in their coffins, and after T-shirts dedicated to the memory of "Mook" and "Goub" and "Gussie" are tucked away in dresser drawers - what, then, for those who loved them?

The haunted

For weeks now, Adams has haunted the El like a ghost, using her cell phone to photograph strangers who look like the mug shot of the man police think killed her son.

The other day in the grocery store, she was sure she saw the gunman. She got so close and stared so hard that when she finally realized it wasn't him, she lied and told him she thought they had once dated.

"Maybe one day," she says hopefully, "I'll look up and snap the right picture."

Diane Adams doesn't just call homicide detectives every day. "I pray every night," she says, "that God will help them find the guy that killed my son."

In Philadelphia, there have been no warrants or arrests in a third of the cases.

Lawanda Welton's son Tariq Blue Jr., 14, was gunned down at a South Philadelphia recreation center in March; police have not found his killer.

"I trust no kids," she says, "because this same child who's going to walk up to me and be smiling in my face could be the same child that pulled the trigger and killed my son."

With no arrest in the April slaying of her son, Vincent, 17, in a Northeast Philadelphia drug house, Donna Thomas believes she has been followed. Her daughter has been jumped. "I'm always looking over my shoulder," she says. "I feel like a sitting duck."

The family of 17-year-old Robert Pierson III is as frustrated as it is frightened. Although the teen who allegedly shot and killed Pierson in the spring is in jail awaiting trial, five other youths who had set out to rob people in Fairmount with him are not, with most charges dropped.

Recently, a kid from another neighborhood pointed a gun at Pierson's younger sister, Monica, 14, who is slated to testify in the trial. Was it a random attempt to start trouble, or friends of the accused trying to intimidate a witness?

When two teens robbed Robert's other sister, 19-year-old Lauren, in September, she was "more mad than upset." She refused to give up her purse until one youth suggested they shoot her; then, when the boy with the gun fled, she chased the other, who had taken the bag. She asked him to give her back something - anything - from the purse. "I said, 'Really, my brother just died. I don't need this!' "