We have said, many times, that black lives don’t matter, at least not to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which only reports on homicides in the City of Brotherly Love in which the victim is an ‘innocent,’ a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl is the victim. However, as we have also noted, the newspaper sometimes tries to make ‘innocents’ out of some younger homicide victims, as reporter Anna Orso did with  13-year-old Marcus Stokes, shot while allegedly on his way to school, even though he was sitting in a possibly disabled car which had been sitting on a corner for weeks, not on his way to school, and in the car several minutes after he would have been late for school.

Well, this time it’s reporter Ellie Rushing’s turn!

The 12-year-old killed and left in a dumpster was missing in plain sight for months before his death

Hezekiah Bernard drifted through the streets of Philadelphia for months before he was killed in unusually cruel fashion.

by Ellie Rushing | Monday, September 25, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Hezekiah Bernard was a 12-year-old missing in plain sight, drifting through the streets of Philadelphia for months before he was killed in unusually cruel fashion: shot in the head, his remains then thrown in a dumpster.

We did ask just how a 12-year-old could have been missing, and no one noticed.

And “unusually cruel fashion”? He was shot once in the back of the head, something which is sadly not unusual in Killadelphia, his body wrapped in plastic, and then thrown in a dumpster. Hey, his killer was trying to clean up his mess! That shows civic responsibility, right?

Friends and relatives knew Hezekiah as a loving, outgoing child who loved to dance. But he faced a number of struggles in recent years, and as his childhood unraveled, he slipped through the cracks of a weak social support system.

“He had a hard life,” said his friend Harmony Wright, 12. “But he was a good person.”

You can already see what’s about to happen: the newspaper and Miss Rushing are telling us that young Mr Bernard was “a good person”, and that the failures in his short life could be blamed on “the cracks of a weak social support system.”

His mother, Delores Davis, said Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services took him into its custody about 18 months ago because of issues in the home that she declined to share. Almost immediately, Hezekiah became a chronic “runner” — running away from every home and facility he was placed in, Davis said.

In February, DHS staff reported him missing to Philadelphia Police, according to a law enforcement source, and he was found the following month. Shortly after that, a judge ordered Hezekiah back into his mother’s care, in hopes that reuniting them would keep him from running away, she said.

So, his young Mr Bernard was taken away from his mother, and put in some form of foster care, for some unspecified reason, but things have to be pretty bad for DHS to take a child from his mother. I did notice that nothing was mentioned about Mr Bernard’s father being present.

Then we get to the sixth paragraph of the story, which fell behind an ad between the third and fourth paragraphs, and a partner content spot between the fifth and sixth. This isn’t something incidental: editors know very well that those kinds of breaks start to lose readers.

But Davis said she was not given the support to navigate his worsening behavior. He stopped going to school, and was hanging with kids many years older who were pressuring him to “do bad things,” she said. Police believe he had started selling drugs in West Philadelphia with other teens. Some nights he wouldn’t come home. His mother feared for his safety, she said, and begged DHS for help that never came.

And there we have it: young Mr Bernard was believed to having started selling drugs, though it was somehow pushed on him by kids “many years older,” and Miss Davis tried to push some of the blame onto the city’s Department of Human Services. My only surprise in this story is that Miss Rushing presented this information as soon as the sixth paragraph; I would have guessed the eleventh!

A few more paragraphs telling us that while other kids (sort of) knew where to find him, none of the adults seem to have tried.

On Aug. 21, his short, difficult life ended: Investigators believe that a teen friend may have shot and killed him over missing drug money, according to a law enforcement source, then wrapped his body in plastic and left it in a dumpster. He’s the youngest person to be targeted in a shooting in Philadelphia this year — as gun violence affects the city’s children at a higher rate than ever before.

On Instagram, scores of people suggested 16-year-old Tysheer Hankinson had killed Hezekiah, and encouraged revenge. But before police were even able to interview him, he was shot and killed.

The case is an example of how trauma, poverty, social media, and broken support systems can intersect in ways that put young people at risk — and it illustrates the struggle to keep kids safe once they’ve been hypnotized by money and false promises of the streets.

“(T)rauma, poverty, social media, and broken support systems”? How about rotten parents!

Rather further down:

Police are still investigating whether (Tysheer) Hankinson was killed in retaliation for Hezekiah’s death, or by someone who may have also been involved in the murder to make sure he didn’t speak to police.

We previously noted the street justice given to 16-year-old Tysheer Hankinson.

Detectives believe Hankinson and Hezekiah had been squatting in an abandoned house and selling drugs in West Philadelphia, according to a law enforcement source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Money had recently come up missing, said the source, and Hezekiah may have been killed over it.

The source said investigators had more evidence linking Hankinson to the crime than just the social media video. And they have developed a second person of interest, another juvenile, who may have been present during Hezekiah’s killing. No arrests have been made.

The police source said Hankinson’s mother had feared for her son’s safety, worries that intensified after he was shot in the face in West Philadelphia earlier this year. He had stopped coming home some nights and was selling drugs, the source said.

OK, young Mr Bernard had rotten parents, bad enough that DHS took him away. His father, Robert Bernard, is still alive, and not in jail, as a photo in the Inky showed him hugging Miss Davis during a ‘balloon release’ for their son, though nothing in the article either stated or implied that they were living together as a family.

In May, the Philadelphia public schools listed the victim as a 12-year-old dropout from the sixth grade.

At least the newspaper didn’t try to say that young Mr Bernard was an innocent victim, though we are supposed to believe that everybody failed him as he grew up. And yes, everybody did fail him, but let’s put most of that blame squarely where it belongs, on his parents! DHS cannot be responsible for every fouled up kid, every juvenile delinquent, out there.

And let’s not forget that fact: Mr Bernard, as young as he was, was a juvenile delinquent. That he had rotten parents does not somehow wipe away the fact that, even as young as twelve, he had to know that what he was doing was the wrong thing, was against the law. If he hadn’t been killed, he’d have eventually gotten caught, and if someone with more sense than Larry Krasner becomes District Attorney, he’d have gone into the juvenile justice system, and eventually real adult state prison. What kind of ‘hood culture tells young kids that this is a good option for them?

But, young Mr Bernard managed to avoid juvie, as did young Mr Hankinson. Gee, what a victory that was for them.