The Philadelphia playground where a much-loved youth volunteer was shot and killed last year now bears his name.
City officials christened the Miles Mack Playground in the Mantua area of Philadelphia at an outdoor ceremony last month, less than a year after Mack’s death. (See “League Founder Gunned Down at Trophy Ceremony” at http://www.youthtoday.org.)
On Sept. 11 last year, during a basketball championship closing ceremony in the old McAlpin Playground, two men opened fire on the basketball team and the surrounding crowd. Mack, 42, was shot several times while shielding one of his young players. Although Mack died shortly after, the boy he protected survived. Another teenager was also killed.
Participants in the ceremony, which began with a march past the Mack family home, included many of the children Mack mentored as part of the X-tra Miles Development Basketball League, which he founded in 2004 to fight teen violence.
