O’Neil Cumberland murder: Family wants answers after Memorial Day weekend murder in Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — A young man celebrating Memorial Day weekend with friends in Fairmount Park is shot and killed while leaving the area. Now his family hopes you can shed light on the identity of his killer.

“I just can’t believe he’s not here,” Donneta Campbell said, speaking of her son, O’Neil Cumberland, 20, whom everyone called “OJ.”

“My son is a very loving and attentive person,” she said.

Campbell says that’s what makes what happened over Memorial Day weekend so difficult.

Cumberland had just gotten off work and his friends wanted him to join them at Fairmount Park on May 26.

“They kept calling him and texting him,” his aunt Kaydian Stone recalled.

At 5:44 a.m., police were called to the 2000 block of Belmont Avenue for reports of a “person with a gun.” When they arrived, they found Cumberland shot in the driver’s seat inside a 2013 Honda Accord. A friend was also injured.

“He said OJ’s foot was already on the gas, so he pressed his foot down and he crouched down and just kept his arm on OJ’s leg, and they just accelerated and hit a tree,” Stone said.

Cumberland was taken to the hospital. He succumbed to his injuries on June 1.

“He’s not in any gangs, no drama, no fights, he’s never been in any kind of trouble with the law, no arguments with anyone, nothing that we know of,” Stone said.

The City of Philadelphia is offering up to a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible.

All you have to do is call the Citizens Crime Commission at 215-546-TIPS. All calls will remain anonymous.

“I know someone knows something, I just know. But it’s a matter of time and that’s why we’re here,” said his aunt Debbie Miller-Curtis.