‘She was my baby girl’: Father remembers Phylicia Council, victim of Maplewood Park mass shooting

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Flying bullets, seemingly fired with little regard for human life, killed two people Sunday in Maplewood Park. One of those people was Phylicia Council. She was a sister, a friend, a daughter, and to her father, his baby girl.

Alex Reese Council is flying to Rochester from out of state this week to help the family plan a funeral for his youngest child, something he says is unimaginable. But instead of focusing on how she died, he wants others to appreciate how she lived.

“This is my baby girl. I’m not supposed to be burying her. She’s supposed to be burying me,” said Alex Reese Council, Phylicia’s father.

Phylicia Council was 33 years old.

“She grew up a very happy girl. She always liked to be around her dad,” he said.

Phylicia worked with special needs children at a Hillside group home for ten years. And while she had no children, her dad says she loved those kids like her own. Hillside leaders told News10NBC they’re providing emotional support for the children and planting a tree in Phylicia’s memory.

The two had a relationship not diminished by distance. When Alex moved to Atlanta and then to Palm Beach, he says their bond only strengthened.

“She would come to see me every summer. Me and her mom had an agreement. She’d come to see me every summer, I’d get her for the holidays sometimes. That was the routine for us,” he said.

One of his favorite memories was when Phylicia secretly recorded a TikTok video.

“And she said, ‘Dad, just stand and when I say move to the side, just move to the side and smile,'” he recalled.

To his surprise, she later posted the video with a message he now cherishes.

“It said, ‘Every spoiled daughter,’ and then I come to the side and smile, and it says, ‘deserves a bald-headed daddy,'” he said.

He says his daughter’s generous spirit led her to her chosen profession of working with special needs kids. And amid his grief, he’s thinking of them.

“She worked with these kids with autism and they just loved her. So when I come to Rochester I’m going to have to go to her school, ’cause I’m going to have to console those kids,” he said.

He says Phylicia had gone to the barbecue to support her stepbrother’s efforts to host a family-friendly community event. And this, he says, was the act of those with no regard for human life. He has a message for those who saw something, who know something, and have remained silent.

“Some of you may not want to do it because you have it in your heart, in your mind, that that’s snitching. And I want to let you know, it’s not,” he said.

He asks those who know something to remember what’s been lost – two precious lives, one of whom he calls his baby girl.

“So I would say to that, Rochester, you lost a very precious angel. You lost an angel and we need to find out who did this crime so that it won’t happen again,” he said.

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