Harvey’s aunt, Sjuwana Springfield, who was caring for him after the deaths of his parents, said the family has spent a year “trying to heal from a broken heart.”
MORE: ‘They broke our hearts’: Hamilton teen’s shooting unsolved 8 weeks later
“Sunday marks a year since this horrible crime was committed. And there is no justice. We have spent a year in a state of grieving and a lot of uneasiness,” Springfield said last week while sitting in her hair salon on Erie Boulevard.
She said Harvey often visited her while she was working.
“I always told him to be careful out there. To know who you are hanging with … he trusted too easily,” Springfield said.
Harvey was killed at Fairview and Pleasant avenues during tha Saturday afternoon incident last year. He was fatally shot after exiting a barber shop shortly after 1 p.m.
Springfield’s daughter and Harvey’s cousin, Mariah Byers, said that “he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught in the crossfire.”
But Byers said some of the people with the man she considered her brother were part of the ongoing gun violence and gang activity in the city.
“It all goes back to Doubles (an incident in July 2016 at the former West Hamilton Doubles bar in which one person was killed and eight were shot),” Byers said.
Evidence presented at trials of two other fatal shootings in Hamilton since then indicate retaliation from the Doubles mass shooting.
MORE: Teen killed in Hamilton shooting ‘was targeted,’ chief says
Springfield said much of the gun violence comes back to young men “trying to fit. Sometimes they don’t get it from their parents or at home and they start identifying with the people on the street rather than their own blood, and it is costing their lives.”
She is pleading for those who have information to contact police.
“It is not about being a snitch, it is about being a witness and doing the right thing,” Springfield said.
The family will mark the anniversary of Harvey’s fatal shooting with balloon launch at 2:30 p.m. today at Greenwood Cemetery in Hamilton.
Hamilton Police Chief Craig Bucheit said Thursday that “it is a very active investigation and we are continuing to work closely with prosecutors.”
He added there are suspects.
“It was clearly gang-related, a targeted act, and we know who is responsible,” Bucheit said.
After the shots were fired that hit Harvey in a car parked near the intersection, a shot was fired into the building at 2501 Pleasant, according to police. A man was in the building but was not injured by the bullet, according to the report.
Residents on Fairview Avenue behind the crime scene that is flanked by a church and barber shop described the shooting as a drive-by with the suspects circling the block before firing shots. The suspects stopped to pick up shell casings after the shooting, witnesses said.
Eight 911 calls were placed by people who saw or heard gunshots.
“We need an ambulance right now, somebody got killed … my dude’s bleeding out,” a male caller told the Butler County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher. “We was at the barber shop, a car pulled up and shot the whole car up.”
MORE: ‘Keep his face active’: Aunt of Hamilton teen pleads for information
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