On a Monday evening in Philadelphia, 17-year-old Quantico Reno Brunson-Moton, a Black male, was with a group of friends near a corner store in his Mayfair neighborhood. Known to his loved ones as Reno, he was a young man with a bright smile and aspirations of becoming an engineer to build schools and houses for his family. He worked at a local Wendy's and was known for his upbeat and helpful nature, often assisting elderly neighbors with their groceries.
The night of October 10, 2016,
turned tragic at around 9 p.m. on the 3100 block of Stirling Street. Surveillance footage showed a white sedan pull up near where Quantico and his friends were gathered. A man dressed in black exited the passenger side of the vehicle. Shortly after, the sound of gunfire shattered the evening quiet. Quantico was struck in the torso, one of three victims in the shooting. His mother, Shantice Moton-Wideman, heard the shots from her nearby home and rushed to the scene to find her son bleeding on the ground. She held him in her arms as he took his last breath. Quantico was taken to Jefferson Frankford Hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries that night. The two other victims, aged 16 and 21, survived the attack.
In the aftermath, police recovered a revolver and a single sneaker from the scene, believed to belong to the shooter. Investigators also found spent shells that did not match the recovered weapon, leading them to believe more than one shooter was involved. The man in black was seen on video running back to the white sedan, which then drove away. Despite the available surveillance footage and a reward of up to $20,000 for information, the case remains unsolved, and no arrests have been made. Quantico's father, Nasir Wideman, expressed a belief that the senseless violence may have originated from a dispute on Facebook. The community was left to mourn a young life full of promise, cut short by an act of violence that remains a mystery.
