Larry Hearn, 60, was shot and killed in front of his Lancaster home on Tuesday just after 10 a.m. Two days later, Lancaster police called the family to tell them that an arrest had been made.
“To hear that he had turned himself in brought a relief,” said Titus Smith, Hearn’s brother-in-law. “Like a burden [had been] lifted.”
It happened right in front of Hearn’s home in the 1300 block of Pennsylvania Avenue. He had just gotten home from the first part of his split shift with DART, where he had been a bus driver for the public transit system since 2003.
When Charles Holloway, Hearn’s nephew, heard of the arrest, he said he really couldn’t believe it. The hardest part to believe was the age of the suspected killer.
“To be honest, I was expecting it to be some years later that they caught the guy because we had no leads in the case. No nothing,” said Holloway. “At 16, you should have been in school! So what was going through your mind? Your motives in all of this?”
Holloway said he will never forget what police said to him when they called with the news of the arrest.
“Just called to give you good news,” explained Holloway. “We caught him and he confessed to everything.”
The family said they are thankful they can bury their loved one knowing his accused attacker has been arrested.
“We gonna cry,” said Smith. “We gonna hurt. But we can rest easy knowing that he is in the hands of God now.”
Through this trying time, they said they still feel compassion for the young man who is behind bars.
“[At] 16 … you feel sorry for him, because he just wasted his life. Now two lives have been destroyed,” said Smith. Even through the midst of what we are going through we have to forgive.”
Lancaster police are not releasing the teen’s identity because he is a minor. In a Thursday press release, Lancaster police said they received an anonymous tip which lead to the arrest of the 16-year-old male suspect and that he has been charged in Hearn’s homicide.
