Veno Leigertwood seemed to be a Delaware County success story.

The 31-year-old Yeadon resident was a counselor with the Philadelphia School District and an entrepreneur.

He was one of the people making a difference. He was known for his mentoring work at Bartram High School in the GEAR UP Program. That stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Rediness for Undergraduate Programs. It targets low-income middle-schoolers and then shadows them through high school.

Leigertwood recently had been promoted and put in charge of a group of counselors.

Now the mentors will need counseling themselves.

That’s because early Saturday morning, as he put some things in his car in front of his Yeadon home as he got ready to head to his last day of grad school at Eastern University, the promise of Veno Leigertwood was snuffed out.

Instead of shaping young lives, Leigertwood joins the list of young lives extinguished by a seemingly never-ending plague of street violence.

Leigertwood became homicide victim No. 32 in Delaware County. Police say he was shot execution style. He died of a single gunshot wound to the neck. The incident occurred around 6:30 Saturday morning.

He leaves behind a wife and 7-month-old daughter.

And a lot of young lives he no doubt would have made a huge difference in. Leigertwood would have been a shining example to a lot of city kids. He was one of them. He came from the some of the same tough neighborhoods they did. And he made it.

Friends say Leigertwood was dabbling in real estate and was renting apartments in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Police believe he was ambushed in his driveway.

No arrests have been made in the case.

And we’re left with the arresting feeling that we have lost a very valuable member of the community, someone who was giving back, was making a difference.

The person who took Veno Leigertwood’s life probably does not know – or care – what they have taken.

That’s for his family, friends, and co-workers to deal with. And the rest of us as well.