Ryan J. Dillon
Age 17
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
A playful boy, stopped by bullets
Everybody could tell you a funny story, his mother said: “Something goofy that he did to them or for them. He just wasn’t mean.”
He’d joined the Mummers, a folk group that marches in Philadelphia’s New Year’s Day parade, one of the best in the U.S. “This is how South Philly rolls,” his father said. “We stick together and we love each other. We don't kill each other.”
On May 25, 2018, Ryan J. Dillon, 17, was shot four times and killed in South Philadelphia. “He was a great kid,” his father said. “I loved him to death.”