Body of 12-year-old boy, shot in the back of the head, discovered in the trash, after a Philadelphia Housing Authority worker had already collected the garbage bin and taken it to another PHA facility. The boy’s body fell out during the process.

The body of a 12-year-old boy was found in a dumpster in West Philadelphia, police say

Hezekiah Bernard, 12, was found dead in West Philadelphia last week.

by Ellie Rushing and Chris Palmer | Thursday, August 31, 2023 | 11:32 AM EDT | Updated: 3:54 PM EDT

The body found in a dumpster in West Philadelphia last week has been identified as a 12-year-old boy, police said Thursday.

Hezekiah Bernard

Police had said they recovered the body of a young man on the morning of Aug. 23 inside a trash can at a public housing complex at 55th and Cherry Streets.

But for nearly a week, they did not know who he was — or that he was a child.

On Tuesday, he was identified as Hezekiah Bernard, according to Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, head of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Homicide Unit.

Surprisingly enough, The Philadelphia Inquirer printed young Mr Bernard’s photo.

Bernard’s death has been ruled a homicide. He was shot once in the back of the head and his body was wrapped in plastic, said Ransom. It was not yet known when he was killed, or how long he had been in the dumpster before police recovered his body.

Really? Wouldn’t the police have a good guess due to the missing person report?

Ransom said Bernard had not been reported missing in recent weeks.

So, a 12-year-old boy goes missing, for over a week, and it wasn’t reported?

Who were his parents? Who was the adult responsible for young Mr Bernard?

An autopsy was conducted, but investigators weren’t able to figure out who the victim was, Ransom said. Detectives distributed fliers in West Philadelphia, and on Aug. 29, Bernard’s relatives reached out to the Medical Examiner’s Office and were able to confirm that Bernard was the victim.

“Relatives” may not have been the people actually responsible for the child’s care, so we can’t automatically blame them. But shouldn’t someone have noticed that he was missing? Yeah, my mind is good at speculating what could have happened, but there are too many possibilities, none of them good.