KILLADELPHIA: 4 Dead In 16 Hours

BY SAM WOOD FOR THE INQUIRER The new Philadelphia police commissioner has his work cut out for him. At least four people were brutally murdered in the 24-hour period that followed Wednesday’s unveiling of Charles H. Ramsey’s new crime-fighting plan. An autopsy scheduled for this morning will determine if a fifth person, found dead early Thursday inside a Kensington rowhouse, was a victim of a drug overdose or a vicious beating, police said.

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The bloodshed began Wednesday evening when a Frankford man, Roberton Overton, was gunned down about 8:30 p.m. outside a city Kmart store. Five hours later, a pregnant woman was killed by a shotgun blast to her back as she sat inside a car on the 4600 block of Griscomb Street. Police this morning identified her as Emine Hajredinaj, 20, of the city’s Frankford section.

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Hajredinaj, who was 28 weeks pregnant, was died shortly after 1 a.m. A man with Hajredinaj was wounded by buckshot when the gunfire erupted on the 4600 block of Griscomb Street. Doctors at Temple University Hospital saved the woman’s unborn child. The baby girl, born two months premature, remains in critical condition, police said.

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Shortly before noon, two men were killed in West Philadelphia when an unknown gunman opened fire on them near 49th and Market Streets. Police identified the victims as Troy Jennings, 32, who lived on the block, and Marcellus Johnson, 29, of Delaware County. “We have to stop this violence and this nonsense,” Ramsey said while getting into his patrol cruiser yesterday afternoon near the crime scene. MORE