70-year-old man fatally shot outside auto body shop in the Ogontz section of Philadelphia<\/a><\/p>\nA customer allegedly fatally shot a worker at an auto-body repair shop Friday in Philadelphia’s Ogontz section.<\/p>\n
Friday’s gathering focused not on the accused, but on the life Vialva lived and the impact he had on those around him.<\/p>\n
“I was devastated. I almost just passed out because my husband is such a nice person; he tries to help people,” said his wife, Carleen Vialva.<\/p>\n
Several people at the vigil said Vialva helped them build better lives by offering jobs and guidance.<\/p>\n
“He gave me an opportunity to work in the shop and learn a trade,” one attendee said.<\/p>\n
“About 15 years ago I came home from being incarcerated. Russel was the first person that gave me a job,” another man said.<\/p>\n
A witness to the shooting said last week that the incident stemmed from a dispute over repair work and that Vialva was shot five times. His son, who works as a mechanic at the shop, witnessed the shooting.<\/p>\n
“It’s senseless. He’s a 70-year-old man; why would you do that? What possessed you to do that?” Robert Vialva said.<\/p>\n
Despite their grief, family members said they intend to continue operating the business and preserving Vialva’s legacy.<\/p>\n
“We’re not going to let his legacy go, we’re not. We’re going to make him proud,” Robert Vialva said.<\/p>\n
Carleen Vialva said she hopes the Lord has mercy on the suspect. She also noted that her husband’s favorite scripture was 1 Corinthians 13, often referred to as the “Love Chapter” in the Christian Bible.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — Family, friends and community members gathered Friday night to honor 71-year-old Russell Vialva, a mechanic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[113820,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-270014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-113820","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}