A Delco teen’s family confronts his killer for taking their ‘whole world’ in deli shooting

Mohammed Yesuf’s parents told a Delaware County judge they weren’t seeking revenge for his death. But they wanted the teenager who killed their only child inside a crowded deli in Darby to understand the weight of his actions before he was sentenced to decades in state prison.

“He was our whole world. Everything we hoped for, everything we live for was wrapped up in him,” the couple told Samir Austin in a letter read aloud in court this week by a victims’ advocate.

“All of that is gone now. We are not in grief; we are broken. We are lost.”

Austin, 16, pleaded guilty Thursday to third-degree murder for shooting Yesuf, 15, twice in the chest inside the Darby Quick Mart in February 2024. He was sentenced by Delaware County Court Judge Dominic Pileggi to 18 to 40 years in state prison.

The motive for the shooting, which also wounded an 18-year-old man who was standing near Yesuf inside the store, remained unclear. But in court documents, investigators wrote that a friend of Austin’s said the teen was upset that people inside the store had stared at him, and fired a 9mm handgun into the business in response.

Austin’s attorney, Gina Amoriello, said during Thursday’s hearing that her client had taken responsibility for his actions from the outset.

And during his first interaction with Yesuf’s loved ones — dozens of whom crowded into Pileggi’s courtroom — Austin apologized for gunning him down.

“I want to tell y’all I’m sorry, from my heart,” Austin said. “I did not mean for this to happen. ... I hope y’all can forgive me.”

Witnesses inside the store at the time of the shooting identified Austin as the gunman, police said. The shooting was also recorded by the store’s surveillance camera, and showed Austin, who was wearing a distinct winter jacket and pants, pull a black 9mm handgun from his waistband before firing.

At the time of the shooting, Austin was on probation for assaulting a teacher at Penn Wood High School, where he was a freshman, according to court records.

Days after the shooting, investigators executed a search warrant on Austin’s home in Darby and recovered the clothing he was seen wearing in the surveillance video, as well as a disassembled 9mm “ghost gun”— a firearm assembled from a kit ordered online.

Last month, Delaware County Council introduced a measure to ban the unlicensed sale, manufacture, and use of parts for 3D-printed guns without a serial number. Council members are expected to vote on the measure later this month.

In their statement to Austin, Yesuf’s parents, who did not give their names, demanded to know why he had chosen to wield that weapon. They wanted to know why he took their son, for whom they had relocated to Delaware County from their native Ethiopia.

“You didn’t just take a boy. You took our family’s future,” they wrote. “You took our heart, our peace and our reason to live.”