Upper Darby community searching for answers after fatal teen stabbing
UPPER DARBY, Pa. (CBS) -- Why? Who is responsible?
An Upper Darby family, friends and detectives are searching for answers after 15-year-old Michael Garr was stabbed last week.
The young teen did not survive.
Upper Darby police want help finding a couple who was captured on camera around the same time of that fatal stabbing.
It happened near a memorial that has been growing in honor of the 10th grade Upper Darby High School student many say was taken too soon.
"It's a horrific act, it's a senseless act," Timothy Bernhardt, the Upper Darby Police Superintendent, said.
Garr's uncle, Mike Peabody, read a prepared statement on behalf of the family and did not take any questions Monday night.
"We are completely devastated by the loss of Michael Jr.," said Peabody, who added his family is trying to make it through these difficult days as the search for justice continues.
Officers are trying to identify the two people who were captured on camera around 9:30 p.m. last Friday – the same time Garr was killed by Bridge Street and Brunswick Avenue.
"We want them to come forward and help us piece this together. They are not suspects, they are witnesses at this point. We just hope they can piece some of the other video and other information we got together," Bernhardt said.
Garr was a 10th grader at Upper Darby High School. A memorial now grows at the scene of the incident, near Christine Kirby's home.
"I got a 15 year old granddaughter myself, it scares you because it's a different world out here," Kirby said.
"There's no reason to go stab somebody and take somebody's life," Daniel Hendrickson-Henry, a neighbor, said.
Hendrickson-Henry lives nearby, and police asked him for his security camera video. He says officers revealed to him Garr had been followed.
"They said that when he was walking on Baltimore Pike that a kid was following him and they've seen cameras that they have footage someone else was following," Hendrickson-Henry said.
But police would not say whether the incident appears targeted or random, or if the teen victim may have known his attacker, leaving neighbors on edge.
"It does worry me for my own kids. I just hope they figure out what's going on," Kevin Bean said.
Now, the community is searching for answers for why this tragedy happened.
"It's really scary actually because you have your own kids that wander around the neighborhood, and you don't know if it's random, someone you know," Pamela Long said.
The Delaware County Fraternal Order of Police announced they are raising the reward to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest.
"We ask the community to continue to communicate with the Upper Darby police around the investigation," Peabody said.