James Odom was only 2 or 3 years old when he started helping himself to people’s car keys. He loved cars already, and he thought that leaving a set of keys out was an invitation.
“Every time somebody left their keys laying around, he would take them and not say anything,” said his sister, Ashley Smith.
Car keys weren’t his only interest. Cell phones caught his eye, too, and Ashley’s money had a way of disappearing when her little brother was around. He didn’t even spend it, she recalled. He just liked having it.
As he grew older, though, James became someone his family could count on to give. The little boy who pocketed his sister’s money grew into a brother who showed up when she needed him, especially after their mother died.
“If you needed something, he was always there,” Ashley said.
James was killed on June 5, 2024, in West Philadelphia. He was 21.
By the time he died, James had a 4-year-old daughter and was expecting a son. Becoming a father had given him reasons to change how he was living, and the news that he would have a boy was something he wanted everyone to know.
He had grown up in West Philly, attending Discovery Charter School, Alain Locke School and Frankford High.
Ashley was much older than James, and they didn’t grow up in the same house. But they shared a mother and a love for each other and their big, extended family. Looking back, she wishes they had gotten to hang out more often.
“He was telling everybody that he was having a baby,” Ashley said. “He was excited to have his first son.”
Ashley remembers a phone call from James around 2:30 in the morning. He wanted to talk about how much he had changed. He wasn’t going out to the streets as much as he used to, he told her.
She said he was making plans to leave Philadelphia, but he never got to make that move.
With his daughter, James made time to be together. Ashley remembered seeing the two of them often at the train station, heading to wherever the daddy-daughter date of the day was. In Ashley’s eyes, they had the best relationship. When she thought about James, being a good father was one of the first things that came to mind, right alongside being the best brother.
His childhood interest in cars stayed with him as he got older. He liked video games, too. But in talking about her brother, Ashley kept coming back to the people in his life and how he was there for them. She remembered him as someone she could turn to, and a young dad who was excited about the family he was building.
Now she wants answers about who took him from them. Police continue to list his killing as unsolved, and Ashley hopes the person responsible will be found.
“I just wish they would hurry up and find the person who did it,” she said. “That’s all I want.”
If you have any information on the shooting, please call Philadelphia Police Homicide Detectives at 215-686-3334. You can also submit an anonymous tip by calling or texting 215-686-TIPS (8477).
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