Tyree Zellars always gravitated towards his elders. He loved his whole family, but thrived with the wealth of knowledge and guidance his grandparents provided him.
“He was a family boy, he really was,” Alane Zellars, Tyree’s mother, said. “When he got out of school, he would go home to check on his grandma, then he would go check on his other grandma and grandpop.”
On the day of his death, March 7, 2004, Tyree was visiting his grandmother in West Philadelphia when a man came running through the vacant lot next to her house, shooting him in the chest. He died two weeks shy of his 19th birthday.
“It devastates me still today, coming up on 14 years,” Alane said. “The anniversary of my son’s death and burial comes before his birthday. There is no way for me to get past these dates, even when I pray, I try to pray my way past these days.”
Tyree is remembered as a respectful young man, who was “always seeking knowledge somewhere.” If he was not spending time with his family, he was playing basketball, participating in a drumline or dancing with friends.
“He would do this dance, and it always looked like he had to go to the bathroom,” Alane joked. “That’s where he got his nickname ‘Doo Doo.’”
At the time, he was in school at University City High and worked at McDonald’s. Tyree was planning his future, and while he didn’t fully have it fully figured out, “he said he always wanted to do things with his hands,” like working as an electrician and electrical engineering.
“I think his understanding on life was the ultimate. He would say, ‘you have to put more than one egg in the basket with life.’… He just knew how to gravitate to life, period. If things didn’t work, he’d find something else.”
Tyree had dyslexia and often struggled in school. One of his proudest moments was graduating from the 6th grade.
“The look on his face was like, ‘wow,’ he didn’t know he could do it,” Alane remembers. “That day, his expression really brought tears to my eyes.”
His daily routine would include going to school, or cleaning the house and cooking his grandmother breakfast.
Whether he was just cracking jokes with his uncles or helping his elderly neighbors with their bags, Tyree was well-liked and respected by those he encountered.
“I think he was proud of every moment, as far as having knowledge and having that wisdom.”
While over a decade has passed since Tyree’s death, Alane has persevered, overcoming her addiction in the years after his passing, and working to create additional dialogue on this issue plaguing Philadelphia’s streets.
“Every now and then I’ll check in with the Philadelphia detectives… The pain of them saying no new leads or anything, it tears my heart up.”
Alane is working to create an organization to start new conversations with mothers who have been on both sides of this issue.
“I’m searching out a path for the mother of the child that has committed a murder and the mother of a child who has been murdered. We’re all hurt in this thing, lives had been shattered on both ends.”
Tyree is survived by Alane, James Torrence, Harriette Zellars, his sister Tionah and brother James, Uncle Windell and more loving family members.
