Crime Update
Man shot in head, chest after money dispute in W. Phila.
A 19-year-old man was shot twice in the head and once in the chest shortly after 4 p.m. yesterday as he sat inside a recreation center at 51st Street and Kingsessing Avenue, West Philadelphia.
Lt. John Walker, of Southwest Detectives, said the unidentified victim was in critical condition at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The shooting appeared to stem from a dispute over money, Walker said. [emphasis mine]
The Daily News is wrong. I live directly across the street from the recreation center, and the victim was not “inside” by any means.
The large rectangle I have outlined in red is the grounds of the rec center: it a large, multi-purpose field ringed with a tall iron fence. I’ve also roughly indicated the geographic orientation of the whole area, indicating which direction is north. The smaller square in the center of the larger rectangle is the edifice itself, a large brick building that houses basketball courts, activities rooms, etc. As you may be able to make out, just east of the building is a baseball field; adjacent, and just north of the building is the basketball court where we had an attempted shooting LAST year (this was also the starting point for Will Smith’s clearly useless anti-violence march last year). West of the building is an open field used for soccer. South of the building is an outdoor playground with swings, a jungle-gym, and slides. Just west of that playground, near where I placed the yellow dot, are a bunch of picnic tables, where nogoodniks sit around drinking forties and smoking blunts. This is where the 19 year old victim was shot.
My housemate emailed me just a moment ago to tell me what he saw:
It looked like a bunch of kids – 14-15 years old, maybe. The paper says the victim is 19. They were standing in a circle against the railing, across the street by the tree one house to the left, then pop pop pop and the one guy dropped and the rest ran in every direction. A crowd gathered, then the cops showed up. They didn’t interview me, but like I said, I couldn’t identify anyone.
Now, unless you’re using a broad definition of “inside” to include the entire grounds of the rec center itself, that guy was not inside by any means. He was in the open air, not more than forty feet from my house or any of my neighbors.
Killadelphia.
April 13th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
shit.
very weird to see that story (more like a blurb) next to the photo of the cherry blossoms.
maybe they meant inside the fence?
April 13th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Damn. You roommate actually saw the shooting?
April 13th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
what he saw is described above. But yeah.
April 13th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
I think they probably meant inside ‘the grounds’ of a rec center.
The whole block is rec center property?
Something probably got fouled up in the editing process; did you contact them, maybe they can clarify?
How about other local news sources; were any TV stations there?
July 17th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
[...] few months ago I wrote about murder number 113, which happened directly across the street from my house in the Kingsessing neighborhood and was witnessed by my former [...]
September 5th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
[...] now, there are about a dozen cops in the same area of the park where there was a shooting last year. From what I’ve gleaned from my neighbor, they busted a couple of people smoking pot. I have [...]