When Kyle Cortez Davis was 6 or 7 years old, he approached his sister with an idea.
“He said, ‘Hey, I’m curious. I want to figure out what’s inside that fire extinquisher,’” Sha’rah Karla Davis said. “I said, ‘Okay! I’m really curious, too!’”
So, Kyle pulled the pin on the extinguisher and sprayed his sister from head to toe with the fluid. Completely drenched, she ran out onto the porch to show their father what Kyle had done, but he didn’t get in trouble.
“Kyle and I laughed about that for years,” Sha’rah said. “For me, that’s probably one of our best moments because it really summed up our relationship. He was curious about everything. He wanted to know everything there was to know without being a know-it-all.”
It’s memories like this that his family is holding onto. Just over a year ago, on Feb. 18, 2019, Kyle was found fatally stabbed inside his home at 55th and Haverford in West Philadelphia as the result of an alleged domestic dispute. Charges have been filed in connection with his murder.
Kyle was born March 1, 1987 in Philadelphia to Michelle Whitfield and Karl Davis. Sha’rah was born a year and nine months later.
The family moved to South Carolina when Kyle was in 7th grade, then moved back to the Philadelphia area about three years later. Kyle graduated from Upper Darby High School in 2005.
Kyle wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life, so a couple years after graduating, he enrolled in the Marine Corps so he could see the world. He served as a mechanic, and his four years in the Marines took him to Myanmar, Thailand, Japan and finally California.
His service took a toll on him, and he was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder.
“As much as he was a free spirit, and as much as he loved just going through life with everything being good, that was more than he could handle,” Sha’Rah said. “And no one could fault him for it.”
Animals brought Kyle comfort and happiness, and he had dogs and turtles over the years. He enjoyed going to zoos and aquariums to check out the exhibits, too.
Kyle and Sha’Rah were close, and they fought like the siblings they were, but they never took things too far.
“Even as adults, we were still able to fight, then call each other like, ‘Hey, you good?’ ‘I’m good,’” she said. “If Kyle didn’t piss you off, you didn’t know him. He’d test everyone, he’d push you to your bounds, with the intent of making sure you were at your best. He wouldn’t let little things trip you up. He’d literally keep going until you stopped getting tripped up on the small stuff. He just was that person who always saw the greatness in people.”
“We loved hard, hands down. We loved hard through and through,” she added.
Sha’Rah wants her brother to be remembered as spontaneous and fun-loving but most of all, he was a family man. There wasn’t anything Kyle wouldn’t do for his family, and his biggest accomplishment was his daughter, Athena, who just turned 2 years old.
“He always wanted children, and he was a girl dad,” Sha’Rah said. “A little girl just fit Kyle. It fit his personality. She softened his heart.”
Sha’Rah, who also served in the military, took on the heartbreaking task of presenting Athena with Kyle’s burial flag at his funeral, which took place the day after his 32nd birthday.
Date: 2019-02-18
Location: 5500 Haverford Ave, Philadelphia, PA
