I met Azir Harris after he was paralyzed in a shooting in 2018. Gunfire early Monday claimed his life.

His wheelchair remained on the block Monday morning amid a sea of bullet casings and evidence markers.

I can’t stop reading that sentence.

I’ve written about gun violence for nearly three decades. And if you do this work long enough, the line between journalists and sources begins to blur. You build connections with victims. Survivors. Families.

I had a deep bond with Azir Harris and his family. Without question.

I always feared this moment, even knowing how likely it was that one of “my guys” might not make it. Not from the bullets themselves, but from the long, brutal complications that follow. Gunshot injuries devastate the body. Paralysis adds another cruel layer of danger and fragility.

But this? This was different. This was devastating.

Azir had already survived the unimaginable. At 17, he was walking to the store with friends when he was shot five times. The bullets left him paralyzed below the waist, and he needed to use a wheelchair to get around. But he’d made it.

So to learn he was one of three people killed early Monday, gunned down at a South Philadelphia block party that left countless others injured, felt like a punch in the gut — a shattering, senseless epilogue I prayed would never be written.

I felt sick when I first read the powerful account by my colleague Ellie Rushing that described Azir’s empty wheelchair stranded among spent shell casings. I still do.

I’ve followed Azir’s journey since 2018. I visited him in the hospital. Sat with his family as they scrambled to find wheelchair-accessible housing in a city with too little of it. I watched in awe and gratitude as readers — many survivors themselves — stepped up to help. They knew what this family was facing. And they didn’t want them to face it alone.

The family gave that love back. Azir and his father came to the support group I helped start for paralyzed gunshot victims. His parents, Troy and Debra Harris, never left his side. But they didn’t just show up for their son. They showed up for others, too.

And on Monday morning, my heart broke as I listened to Troy’s voice crack on the phone.

“We lost him,” he told me. “We lost our light.”

Azir Harris, 24, had gone to the 1500 block of South Etting Street Sunday night for a cookout. Music, food, laughter — a gathering of young people on a summer night. The day before, people had filled that same block for a memorial to four young men lost to gun violence in recent years.

Then came the gunfire. Just before 1 a.m., more than 100 rounds tore through the crowd. Azir, still seated in his wheelchair, was struck multiple times in the back.

He was rushed to the hospital, but after hours of waiting and hoping, the family was led into a room. A doctor told them their son couldn’t be saved.

The youngest of six. Gone.

I try to stay in touch with the people I write about — especially those whose lives have been upended by violence that never gets enough attention or respect.

But talking to Troy Monday morning, I learned something I hadn’t known: Azir was a father now. He had a 1-year-old son, Aspen. Aspen’s mother, Siani Wylie, was with him when the shooting started. She was shot, too — multiple times — trying to shield him.

(And as an added blow, I later learned Siani is related to Victoria Wylie, the anti-gun violence advocate who led the support group for paralyzed gunshot victims after her own brother was shot and killed in 2008. She took a kernel of an idea and turned it into a family. Another cousin, Zahir Wylie, was also shot and killed at the cookout on Monday.)

“Helen,” she texted me.“This is too much,” And it is. It really is.

I remember seeing Azir and Siani together for the first time about six years ago. They were young and in love, smiling at a basketball tournament organized by a suburban teen in 2019 who had read about Azir in one of my columns and wanted to help.

By the time I reached Hannah Bookbinder — whose son, Zach, organized that tournament — on Monday, Azir’s father had already made the call.

She’d have to break the news to her son when he got home. When Azir was first shot, she said, there was a sense of helplessness, but a feeling that “at least then we can do something to make it better.

“There’s nothing that’s going to make this better,” she said.

Back in South Philly, Azir’s father spent the morning phoning the people who had helped his son through the darkest chapters of his life.

It broke me. And it made perfect sense. That’s who they are — even in grief, still thinking of others.

I remember visiting them as they searched for a wheelchair-accessible home that wouldn’t feel like a trap. I remember Azir, always watching, always thoughtful, asking me if I was OK.

“You always look like you’re about to cry,” he teased.

I laughed and told him, “That’s just my face.”

But he was right. Every time I sit with people forever impacted by the unending gun violence in our city, every time I listen to families and victims fighting for attention and care after surviving the worst thing in their lives — I’m crushed and furious, and yeah, I probably look like I’m about to cry.

On Monday, I finally did.