If you’re reading this, you’ve likely heard that Kevin Neary was shot in the neck late Monday night. Of course, everyone loves Kevin, so we’re getting a lot of questions about how Kevin’s doing, what happened, and what you can do to help. So we wanted to create a place where we’ll post updates on Kevin’s situation.

Here’s what we know happened: Some time after 2 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Kevin was shot in the neck. He had gone to the Penn basketball game earlier in the night, then met up with a friend in his neighborhood (Northern Liberties). After walking his friend home, someone followed him and, when Kevin was just steps away from the entrance to his building, the person shot him in the neck. We believe this was an attempted robbery. Kevin was conscious when the police arrived, but lost consciousness on the way to the hospital. Since then, the detectives have found surveillance video that we think will enable us to find the person responsible. We will have an update on that soon. Right now, we are focused on getting Kevin the best care possible.

Now to the really hard part. The doctors believe there was significant damage to his spinal column, and the prognosis is not good. In all likelihood, he will not regain any functionality below his neck. This is the hardest part for those of us who know him to accept. I don’t think you could find a more outgoing, warm, energetic guy. And imagining a world without Kevin popping around the corner and saying or doing something goofy is really, really hard to think about. But we remain hopeful despite the early prognosis because we know Kevin’s a fighter.

The good news — what we’re trying to focus on — is that he’s still with us. He is awake and alert. He’s unable to speak because he’s still on a breathing tube, but he can communicate with us by his facial expressions and by spelling out words. If you know Kevin, you won’t be surprised that the first thing he spelled out for my dad was “call work.” And you also won’t be surprised to learn that before the detectives left, he insisted on spelling out “thank you” for working to find the person who did this to him. Kevin is the hardest working and kindest person I know, and we’re really glad that hasn’t changed.

The goal right now is keeping him stable and getting the swelling down so we can get him off the breathing tubes and get a better sense what the next steps are for him. We don’t really know what those are yet, but we will use this website to send you updates. If you’ve emailed us or called, we’ve got you on our list. You’ll get email updates when this site is updated.

We want to thank everyone for your love, support, and offers to help. It’s really great to know that Kevin has so many people that want to help and will support him as he gets better.

One of the amazing things about Kevin is that he finds a way to make everything work. With all of your help, we’re going to help him make it work.

If you have any questions or would like to receive updates, please email Chris (nearyc@gmail.com) or Joe (nearyjp@gmail.com). We are working on getting a distribution list together, so if you sign up you will receive any updates from this website via email.

Thank you all again.

-The Neary boys