Hardly a day goes by when Tanya Steward doesn’t pick up her cell phone and listen to the message her younger brother Lavaun left for her on her 37th birthday in September 2017.
“He’s going, ‘Happy birthday homieeeee,’ you know, singing me the whole ‘Happy Birthday’ song and then he says, ‘This is your brother Vaun, happy birthday baby, I love you, Tanya,’“ his sister said. “I play it and play it, just to keep him with me in some way.”
Just a few months later, on the night of Dec. 12, 2017, Lavaun Steward was found shot to death by a still-unknown assailant on the enclosed porch of his home on the 5500 block of Greenway Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia. He was 32.
The house Steward was living in belongs to his mother, but when she and other family members, including Tanya, migrated to Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in recent years, Steward stayed in Southwest Philly with a mission to fully renovate the Greenway Avenue residence.
“He loved doing that kind of work, it was his passion,” Tanya said of her brother, who was an expert carpenter, electrician and painter.
Born on Aug. 28, 1985 in North Philadelphia, Steward moved with the family to the home when he was around 6 or 7 years old. After graduating from John Bartram High School — where he was known to friends as “Veezy” — he signed up for Philadelphia Job Corps, where he learned carpentry and other skills.
Between that and working for landscaping companies, Vaun was always keeping busy, Tanya said.
“He loved working outdoors, he loved fixing things up, he always liked the independent type of job because he was always an independent person,” Tanya recalled. “He was a real sweetheart — he would always do little odd jobs for people around the neighborhood who couldn’t afford to pay someone.”
Vaun was a take-charge kind of a guy, his sister said, including when their stepfather passed away in June 2012 after a lengthy battle with cancer and Vaun coordinated the memorial. “‘We have to get this together, does anybody want flowers, are you hungry, do you need something to eat?’” Tanya recalled Vaun saying. “He wanted to make sure everything was done right. Even when we were younger and my mother would go out and left him in charge, he would say how things were gonna be because he didn’t want to let our mother down. He was the baby of the family, but you would have thought he was the oldest. He had that spunk about him.”
When he wasn’t working, or fixing up his mother’s house, Vaun enjoyed playing basketball at the Francis Myers Recreation Center — where they take hoops very, very seriously — or listening to music: everything from old-school Philly soul to the latest hip-hop. But he especially loved spending time with his family, coming up to Pottstown regularly or having family members come visit him, and he was a true father-figure to his nephew, Tanya’s 13-year-old son.
“He was a real sweet person, to know him was to love him,” Tanya said wistfully. “Even though I was the older sister, he was my rock. It went both ways, though. By the time he entered his teenage years I was venturing out into the world, but I never forgot about my little brother. I would go get him and we’d go on little trips, to theme parks and things like that, and he was so happy.”
“He would do anything for anybody, he didn’t give anyone a reason to have ill feelings towards him or to take his life,” Tanya said, despair creeping into her voice before she paused to compose herself again. “That’s why it’s been such a hard thing for everybody to understand,” she said.
Police are still trying to figure out who shot him. The unsolved case was recently profiled in a 6ABC “Crime Fighters” segment in which investigators urged anyone with information about the killing to come forward. The city is offering a $20,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction, and anyone with tips can call 215-546-TIPS or email [email protected]. All tips can be made anonymously.
Meanwhile, Tanya said, her brother’s death has left the whole family with a huge void. Yes, she still has that birthday message from him on her phone, and there are plenty of videos of him, too — “we try to get some healing out of that, but those are sad moments for us to watch,” Tanya said. “But it kind of helps us to not forget him.”
Date: 2017-12-12
Location: 5500 block of Greenway Avenue, Southwest Philadelphia
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