Chances are if you saw Shyheim Jones on the street, he would be zipping down the road on a dirt bike.
He loved tinkering with his bike and fixing other motorcycles, a skill he picked up from his older cousins.
“My sons were all always good with their hands,” said Shyheim’s mom, Elizabeth. “As they got older they took up some trades, and whatever one learned they taught the other.”
Heimy, as they called him, had such a love of bikes that some memories are imprinted in his children, Syrus, 7, and Julius, 6. He also had another child who died before he did, and he left behind his girlfriend, Mary.
Even though the kids were very young when he was killed, they still remember the rush from riding on the seat in front of him, giggling and screaming as he held them tight between him and the handlebars. “Grammom, remember when Heimy, my dad, used to take us to the store and tell us to hold on?” says Syrus.
“Sometimes thinking about it makes me cry,” Elizabeth said. “It’s so unfair to take someone when his kids are finally able to really enjoy him.”
Shyheim was killed on Sept. 15, 2020 on Thayer Street near Kensington Avenue in the Harrowgate section of Kensington.
He had grown grew up in Frankford and went to Memphis academy before later changing to home schooling. He went through his struggles as any kid would, and sometimes his friends got him into things he wasn’t supposed to do.
Overall, though, he was warm-hearted person, and his family would agree he was also something else—a momma’s boy. He was the youngest of seven kids in a close family, but as the baby boy he knew how to get to his mom.
“He was the one that always got what he wanted, and if he didn’t he’d have a little tantrum.” ‘Ya’ll don’t love me!!’” Elizabeth said, laughing at the memory. “It was funny to us because he was so spoiled.
Anytime someone brings up his name, it brings a smile to her face. “He’d be like, ‘mom, mom!’” She said. And in texts, “it was always moooooom with all these O’s and M’s and I’d be like, “OK what you want now?’”
He was close to all his siblings but especially to the other youngest three, who were very close in age. They were inseparable, and they have all taken his death very hard.
“When it comes around close to his death date or birthday, it means a big depression for all of us,” she said.
But then, they think of the good times, and even things that used to annoy them now make them smile.
“He used to do this thing pissed everybody off,” Elizabeth said. “He would suck his finger and stick it in his sister’s ear. He knew she hated it, but he’d do it every chance he got.”
Shyheim also had grown up, though, and since he was good with his hands he got involved with construction work, which he learned from his brother. They did everything, demolition, floors, carpentry, you name it. He had even begun investing in properties with other people so he could eventually give his kids the life they deserved.
In the meantime, he took them to the beach and went skating with his family, anything to keep them entertained.
For a time, he moved out to Wilkes-Barre to live with his sister, and he was working in a factory making bullets for the military. Then he moved back to Philly a few months before it all happened.
In his final years, there was a perceptible shift toward being more family oriented.
“I could see he was growing,” Elizabeth said. “They took my son away from me when he was at his best.”
The feeling of love between mother and son was obvious. All you had to do was see the tattoo of his mother’s name on his chest. Not what everyone calls her, but her full name, even though she doesn’t like it.
“Everyone calls me Liz. I was like ‘Lord have mercy, why?’” she said, sighing. “He has tattoos all over. But one stands out.”
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