When he was young, Yasir Hopkins dreamed of making it big in basketball or boxing. He closely followed the Sixers, idolizing players like Allen Iverson and Ben Simmons.
“Ever since he was old enough to pick up a basketball, he wanted to play. Then he wanted to box,” said Yasir’s mother, Crystal Justice. “He was just outgoing and very much into sports. He dreamed about playing, and he dreamed of being a success.”
As he got older, though, reality set in, and Yasir recognized that his NBA and pro boxing aspirations weren’t in the cards.
But, business school offered a chance to prosper. Crystal said her son had plans to open an auto repair business and to sell real estate on the side.
“He wanted what his father didn’t provide,” Crystal said, fighting back the tears that two years of mourning haven’t yet dried.
Yasir wouldn’t get the opportunity to realize his dreams. On July 24, 2018, Yasir was shot and killed in the 200 block of South Ithan Street. He died a short time later at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.
“Seeing his body is what I’ll remember. Laying there. Dead. It took so much out of me and I’ve had a lot of experiences that woke me up,” said Crystal, who started a nonprofit in Yasir’s memory called We Need You, Inc.
Born on May 8, 1992, Yasir was as “happy a child as you’d ever want to meet,” his mother, Crystal said.
As a pre-teen, Yasir, whose nickname was “Ya,” felt the sting of disappointment from his biological father, who walked away one day after promising to return to buy him a pair of sneakers.
Crystal said her son “sat on the porch for a week looking for his dad.”
“Yasir could never understand why his dad did that,” she said.
When Yasir was about 13, his older brother Jeffrey succumbed to a lifelong illness, but Yasir failed to grasp there wasn’t anything anyone could do.
In hospice care, Crystal made the agonizing decision to remove Jeffrey’s oxygen to allow the 22-year-old to die peacefully.
“While Jeffrey was transitioning, and Yasir was like, ‘Mom, why didn’t you keep the oxygen on?’ I was trying to explain to him that we were just making him comfortable,” Crystal said.
Life would continue to throw Yasir curveballs.
After a stint at the Glen Mills School, Yasir’s family moved to Maryland, where he graduated high school after starring on the basketball team. The aspiring rapper and boxer proved he could hoop with the best.
“He won awards because he was so good at basketball,” Crystal said.
The family then moved back to Philly. Yasir earned a certificate in auto mechanics from Lincoln Tech and briefly attended Harcum College for business administration in addition to Temple University’s Real Estate Institute.
She recalled making sure that her son had nice things, including a car and money for necessities. But, his independent nature and loyalty to his friends in Cobbs Creek was strong.
“He was living the street life, and I would see him on the corner, and I would tell him to be careful of who your friends are, and he would tell me to stop worrying because my worrying was only going to get him killed.”
“I’m not saying Yasir was an angel,” Crystal continued. “But, he was just 26, still my baby. Still with dreams. You never get over that, you never forget the hurt. Yasir has a younger brother, and he’d tell him don’t get caught up in the streets.”
Yasir is buried in the Friends Southwestern Burial Ground in Upper Darby.
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 persons responsible for Yasir’s murder. Anonymous calls can be submitted by calling the Citizens Crime Commission at 215-546-TIPS.
Date: 2018-07-24
Location: 200 S Ithan St, Philadelphia, PA
