Three years after her tragic death, a local pool will be renamed to honor Aliza Spencer, a 12-year-old girl killed on April 21, 2022 after she was struck by a bullet while walking near her house on Bigelow Street in Binghamton’s East Side.

Despite an extensive police investigation that began soon after the shooting, no suspect has yet been identified.

Earlier this month, the Binghamton City Council unanimously passed a resolution to rename the pool house at Fairview Park in her honor. Mayor Jared Kraham signed it less than a week later.

“Like all kids that grew up on the East Side, whether it was me, Aliza or my kids, Fairview Park is where we all played growing up,” Michael Dundon, the council’s president whose district includes the East Side, told WBNG. “So it only seemed right to me to get this going to rename the pool and the pool house to the Aliza Spencer Memorial Pool.”

The Binghamton Police Department recently increased an award from $32,000 to $50,000 for anyone who offers information leading to a suspect’s arrest. The state police assisted with the investigation, and officials announced that the FBI had joined the investigation last year.

Nearly six months after the April shooting, a Little Free Library was dedicated to Spencer in a ceremony at the Calvin Coolidge Elementary School. Last week, students from the East Middle School, which Spencer attended before her death, went to Calvin Coolidge to help their younger peers make bracelets as part of a larger Friendship Day remembrance that first began in 2023. A fourth grade teacher whose daughter was best friends with Spencer showed her students a slideshow presentation about her.

“We don’t understand why, we have no answers as to why,” Fred Spencer, Aliza Spencer’s father, told WBNG. “It’s very frustrating and hurtful every day to get up and not know why or what the reason why your daughter was murdered.”

Dundon said he was in contact with local artists to design a mural of Spencer at the pool house.

The community will honor all crime victims during the opening of a Crime Victims Memorial at Roundtop Park. The project was created by Schyler Savage, a member of Boy Scout Troop 199, as a memorial to his mother, who died in 2023. Expected to open this summer, the memorial will feature a statue, garden and a wall showing “the names of community members lost to crime (including abuse),” according to the Crime Victims Assistance Center.

A formal ceremony, open to the community, will be held to commemorate the pool’s renaming.

“We’re not only working with Aliza Spencer’s family to honor her life and legacy, but continuing to raise awareness in our collective mission for justice,” Kraham said. “This renaming, and the increased reward for information that leads to an arrest in this case, will support those efforts.”