Pittsburgh Allderdice HS Student Shot Dead Wednesday Featured In 2014 WESA NPR Special

PITTSBURGH, PA. (THECOUNT) — Jonathan Freeman has been identified as the Pittsburgh teenager found killed Wednesday night on a Homewood South street, reports say.

Freeman, 16, was discovered suffering from at least one gunshot wound around 7:40 p.m. on Susquehanna Street, according to the medical examiner’s office.

Freeman was transported to an area hospital where he was later pronounced dead of gunshot injuries.

According to reporting by wpxi, Freeman was a Junior at Allderdice High School.

Pittsburgh Public Schools released the following statement on the death:

“A high achieving student, Jonathan was known to always have a smile on his face and was very well-liked by all who knew him. Jonathan has a long history with the District, first as a student at Pittsburgh Liberty K-5, then as a student at Pittsburgh Obama, and most recently a student of Pittsburgh Allderdice. We are all very saddened by this senseless loss of life.” source

Per procedure, Pittsburgh Allderdice will operate on a modified lockdown until further notice, the school district said.

No suspect or motive information was provided by officials and no arrests have been made in the case.

When Freeman was 12 years old, he was featured in a WESA, NPR “Special Series,” entitled “From ‘Pantry’ to ‘Kitchen’: Transforming the Way Teens Use the Library.” The follow is an excerpt from the 2014 article:

“It was the second week of June, and Pittsburgh Public Schools had been out of session for two days. And yet, half a dozen teenagers and pre-teens were sitting around a table, enthusiastically engaging in a lesson about ancient Egypt.

“What do we know about Egypt and why was it such a big deal?” asked Oliva Hric, museum educator with the Carnegie Library of Natural History. “Can you think of anything in the landscape that maybe would make Egypt a really great place to live?”

“Because they were on the Nile River they could have had a good water supply,” answered 12-year-old Jonathan Freeman, clearly familiar with the concept.

Freeman and the other teens weren’t at summer school; they were at The Labs at the Carnegie library’s East Liberty branch.”

Anyone with possible information on the deadly incident should contact police at 911.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more details are made available.

Pittsburgh is a city in western Pennsylvania at the junction of 3 rivers. Its Gilded Age sites, including the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, speak to its history as an early-20th-century industrial capital. In the North Shore neighborhood are the modern Andy Warhol Museum, Heinz Field football stadium and PNC Park baseball stadium, according to wikipedia.