Kyle Singleton could pick out an outfit that wouldn’t embarrass you, iron your hair, plan your red-carpet prom party, cook you a salmon-and-asparagus feast, and move your heaviest air conditioner without missing a beat.
A free-spirited jokester, Kyle enjoyed vacationing from Miami to Mexico, London to Paris.
“I can eat when I get back home,” he told naysayers who questioned his spending habits.
“Everybody would say he was such a ball of energy,” remembered his younger sister, Curtisha Neal
Singleton. “All he wanted to do was laugh and have fun and give as much love as he possibly could.”
At 1 a.m. on May 11, 2022, Kyle called his mom, Denise Neal Singleton, to let her know that he wouldn’t be home that night because he was staying with a friend in Brewerytown.
Later, at around 10:30 a.m., Kyle was fatally shot in the 1800 block of North 28th Street. He was 30
years old. No suspects have been arrested.
While the police investigation continues, Kyle’s friends and family are organizing rallies every month at
the site of his murder to demand justice.
“We are really lost,” said Curtisha, who believes that her brother was targeted. “We don’t have a clue.”
Born on Aug. 7, 1991 in North Philadelphia, Kyle was the second-youngest of five children. The family
nicknamed him “Wheezy” due to his severe asthma. Kyle could predict with pinpoint accuracy when an attack was coming on and calmly asked to go to the hospital, which he did twice a year for the first 13
years of his life, his family recalled.
From an early age, Kyle would dress up, even to go to the corner store — a habit he learned from his
stylish father, Curtis Singleton. Kyle’s capsule wardrobe included plaid flannel shirts in the winter paired with jeans that he artfully distressed and ripped, and crisp white shirts in the summer (sometimes with buttons open halfway to his waist). He had a way of making even sweatpants look presentable, pairing them with Nike Dunk sneakers, a button-down denim shirt and David Yurman accessories.
He did not appreciate his sisters’ dressed-down attire. “You are not coming outside with me looking like that,” he teased Curtisha.
Mom’s house was the official and unofficial party hangout. A homebody yet ongoing, Kyle had separate sets of best friends for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They gathered on his bedroom floor as he sprawled out on his immaculate, hotel-quality sheets that no one else could touch.
As a tall, trim student at Simon Gratz High School, Kyle organized fashion shows, sewing and modeling
the clothes. For a time, he considered modeling in Manhattan, but instead enrolled in a criminal justice program through the Community College of Philadelphia.
He left CCP after a year and worked as a mental health counselor for 12 years. His last position was at
Fairmount Behavioral Health System in Roxborough, where he brought patients his extra clothes, gave
them his home number, and calmed them down after they tried to run away.
Kyle was similarly protective of his family, including his three sisters — Curtisha, Desiree and Deneshia. His older brother, Curtis Jr., died in a house fire when he was 27 years old. Encircling Kyle’s ring finger was a tattoo of Curtis Jr.’s signature; most of his 16 tattoos were dedicated to the people he loved and lifted up.
Kyle would drop everything to help out his nine nieces and nephews — even if he would rather be
watching TikTok. He enjoyed reenacting skits, dangling his long, skinny legs over an ill-fitting bicycle.
When he was out to dinner, he often FaceTimed his relatives until his battery conked out.
For Denise’s birthday in January, the family took her on an epic trip to Vegas. Everyone made up fake
names as part of a drinking game that involved pounding shots of Hennessy. Denise recalled a blissfully buzzed Kyle (aka Jonathan) spinning her around on The Strip.
Denise taught Kyle how to cook, and her son would spend an entire weekend in a frenzy trying to fill 500 pre-orders for his meal delivery business. His signature dish was a garlic-and-butter seafood platter crammed with Dungeness crab legs, jumbo shrimp, corn on the cob, and homemade mashed potatoes. When he wasn’t cooking on the clock, Kyle snacked on grab bags of gummies and Reese’s, applesauce cups in every flavor, and rolled-up lunch meat.
He had a strong desire to be his own boss. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kyle started a cleaning
company, InBetween Cleaning. Six months before he was killed, he had saved up enough to purchase his dream car, a gray Dodge Challenger.
Denise recalled that one day shortly before her son’s death, the family had been sitting around talking
about funerals. Kyle piped up that he did not want the traditional hands folded at his abdomen or any
carnations in sight.
Kyle’s Janazah, or Muslim funeral, occurred on the same day that the family was due to celebrate his
cousin’s 21-year-old birthday. The cousin had lost his father in April, and Kyle had meticulously planned all the details of the celebration — down to the young man’s ensemble of distressed jeans and a polo shirt.
Instead, the family gathered to bury Kyle in Chelten Hills cemetery in the West Oak Lane section of the
city. Kyle’s hands rested by his sides, flanked by 1,000 fashionable red roses.
A reward of up to $20,000 if available to anyone that comes forward with information that leads to the
arrest and conviction of the person responsible for Kyle Singleton’s murder. Anonymous calls can be submitted by calling the Citizens Crime Commission at 215-546-TIPS. Information can also be submitted to the Philadelphia Police Department online or by calling 215-686-TIPS.
Resources are available for people and communities that have endured gun violence in Philadelphia. Click here for more information.
A version of this obituary appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
