“Disney, Disney, Disney,” was always on the mind of Carl J. Burgess. A trip to the theme park is a dream come true for many people — and even at 35 years old, Carl was no exception.
“He loved Goofy. He had a Goofy hat,” Carl’s mother, Valerie Burgess, remembered. “He loved all of the rides, the fast rides.”
It would have been a dream for Carl to take his three daughters to Disney World. Instead, five years after his death, “Mom mom Val,” as Carl’s daughters affectionately call their grandmother, took them instead.
Carl was killed in Point Breeze on May 30, 2013. After work on that spring day, he visited his grandmother’s house with his daughter, Mysha Morgan. On their way home, Carl heard a disruption at the end of the street and decided to see what was happening.
“He walked down, directly into it… just to say, ‘Hey, what’s going on,’” Valerie said. The details of what caused the shooting aren’t fully known to her, and no arrest has been made in the case.
“I can only say what I hear. I do know that he turned around and he got shot in the lower part of his back. They hit a main artery and he bled out.”
Valerie tried to conduct her own investigations, and time and time again, people in the neighborhood would tear down her flyers. Every time, she would put them back up, hoping for closure.
“When my son died, my heart broke,” Valerie shared. “I had to go to make sure I wasn’t having a heart attack, I had to go see my primary doctor because it was so for real. My mother told me that I had a broken heart.”
She remembers her son as a caring and loving person. As a child, he took care of animals from his school.
“He used to bring the pets home and hide them from me in the basement. My daughter, she used to say, ‘Mom, Carl got a snake downstairs,’ or ‘Carl got a rabbit downstairs,’” Valerie remembered with a smile. “I used to say, ‘what are you doing with these animals?’ and he’d say ‘I got to take care of them for the teacher for the holiday weekend.’”
Carl was also very curious. His mother remembers him building and fixing things all throughout his youth. When he was 10, he took apart a thermostat just to understand how it worked.
Those traits carried into his adult life. Carl was employed as a maintenance supervisor at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. He worked a job that he loved, with a team that appreciated him.
“He was a people person, he got along with a lot of people,” his mother expressed. “A lot of people tell me that he was a good man that this shouldn’t have ever happened to him.”
Some of Valerie’s favorite memories of her son are from family gatherings. He loved his three daughters, and enjoyed summertime cookouts with his large family.
“He was a very fun person to be around. He was a debater. He would always challenge you,” Valerie said. Because of this, she used to joke that Carl should try out for a TV show like “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”
“He was always a character. Always comical, always liked to be involved in really different things.”
Sometimes he was literally a character. Valerie remembers his first job at age 16, dressing up as Chuck E. Cheese at the family fun center in South Philadelphia.
“We really miss him. I don’t have closure. Why? I don’t know why he was murdered.”
At the time of his death, he was excitedly waiting to attend his daughter’s graduation that was set to happen just a few weeks later.
Carl is survived by his daughters: Mysha Morgan, Laila Hall and Nasha Burgess.
News story:
6ABC
