A 16-year-old boy was killed in a barrage of gunfire in the 2300 block of Watkins Street in South Philadelphia shortly after 4 p.m. Friday. The victim – homicide 163 – was identified as Rhamik Thomas of the 1700 block of Natrona Street in North Philadelphia.
“Somebody walked up to him and gunned him down, using a 9mm gun,” Williams said.
Police said more than 20 shots were fired at Thomas, who was pronounced dead at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania at 4:42 p.m.
“We got a call of a man with a gun, and when we got there, there was a crowd of people, but no one is forthcoming with any information. . . . But we’ll still plug away at it,” he said.
INQUIRER: 20 Shots Fired Into A 16 Year Old On Street Corner In Broad Daylight — And Nobody Saw Nothing. Period. Sad To Say, When It Comes To These Situational Outbreaks Of Mass Amnesia And Selective Blindness, Nobody Even Bothers To Tack On The Question Mark Of Righteous Incredulity Anymore.
A 17-year-old who was shot in the arm and neck on April 27 in Newark’s Fifth Precinct. Officers said he refused to say who shot him.
NEW YORK TIMES: In the few moments it took officers to scurry down the block, the killer had vanished, leaving a man slumped in the street with a bullet in his face and bystanders who treated investigators like a band of pesky door-to-door salesmen, shrugging that they had witnessed nothing. The following night, in a park three blocks from the station house, a circle of young men surrounded an 18-year-old college student and fired a single shot into his head. “I don’t know what frustrates me more,” Captain Coley sighed the next afternoon, an aromatherapy candle burning in her precinct office. “These knuckleheads killing each other, or the residents who won’t cooperate with my officers.”
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PHILLY CONFIDENTIAL: Out of the 406 murder victims in 2006, 72 percent were black men. Throw black women into mix and the number rose to 83 percent. Since October 2003, Philadelphia has lost over 1,000 black men to murder, according to police stats.
