INQUIRER: Two people are dead and three others in critical condition in separate shootings across Philadelphia overnight, police said this morning.Since just after 7:30 p.m. last night there have been seven shooting incidents in the city and in Overbrook an woman was stabbed numerous times. James Lewis, 17, was shot in the back of the neck in the 3100 block of Rorer Street in Kensington at 10:21 p.m., said Officer Christine O’Brien. Lewis, of the 1900 block of East Monmouth Street in Kensington, was taken to Temple University Hospital and pronounced dead at 10:39 p.m. No arrests were reported. At […]

INQUIRER: Beau Zabel, 23, came to Philadelphia from Minnesota six weeks ago, eager to experience urban East Coast living and to become a math teacher in the city school system. He found a place to live through roommates.com in South Philadelphia near the Italian Market, and took a temporary job at the Starbucks at Fourth and South Streets.He recently updated his page on myspace.com, which proclaims his optimism: “Just waiting for life to begin.” But his life ended at about 1:30 a.m. today, when police said Zabel was ambushed as he walked home from the midnight shift at the coffee […]

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Three adults and a 6-year-old girl were shot outside a social club that was hosting a barbecue, police said Sunday. Someone fired into a crowd of people from an alley across the street around 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Officer Tanya Little said. All four victims were taken to a hospital in private vehicles. The adults were listed in critical condition with unspecified injuries; the girl was stabilized and transferred to a children’s hospital. The names of the victims were not released. No arrests had been made and authorities said they were still trying to sort out exactly what happened. […]

INQUIRER: A double shooting at a Catholic elementary school early this morning left a man and a woman dead before dawn. Gunshots rang out at 4:10 a.m. at the Holy Innocents Catholic School in Philadelphia’s Juniata section, police said. Two women were sitting in a van parked on the school’s grounds when a gunman approached and opened fire. The shots fatally wounded a 19-year-old a woman. The man, 27, then turned the gun on himself, police said. * The Archdiocese of Philadelphia cancelled classes today for several hundred students who attend Holy Innocents and the adjoining St. Lucy Day School […]

INQUIRER: A pregnant Germantown woman who was shot in the head Sunday night died early this morning at Albert Einstein Medical Center, police said. Bobbi Booker, 26, was shot in her left temple as her live-in boyfriend exchanged gunfire with another man outside the couple’s Queen Lane apartment in Germantown. Booker, who was four-months pregnant, had been on life-support since the shooting. Doctors were not able to save her four-month old unborn child, police said. Booker had two other young children. Police charged her boyfriend, Michael Thomas, 26, and Lamar Johnson, 22, with two counts each of attempted murder, aggravated […]

INQUIRER: The four deaths in Philadelphia brought the city’s homicide toll through yesterday to 122. There were 163 murders as of May 25 last year. The first of the four Philadelphia homicides was discovered at 10:31 p.m. Friday, when police found Oanh Na Lieu shot multiple times inside a BMW parked on the 2600 block of South Seventh Street in South Philadelphia. Lieu, 22, of West Philadelphia, was pronounced dead at the scene at 10:45 p.m. * Three Philadelphia men were shot dead in separate incidents in the city in the early today. According to Homicide Sgt. William Gallagher police […]

INQUIRER: Police this morning identified a 29-year-old man who was shot to death in Southwest Philadelphia yesterday. Sokoni Meachum was found lying on the sidewalk with several gunshot wounds to the chest in the 2500 block of South 66th Street shortly before 6 p.m., police said. Meachum, of the 2500 block of South Shields Street, was transported to the Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania and pronounced dead at 6:23 p.m. No arrests were reported.

INQUIRER: Investigators this morning are probing a double shooting in West Philadelphia that left two dead and riddled with bullets, police said. Officers were called at 12:38 a.m. to the 300 block of N. 62nd St. They found a 19-year-old woman shot twice in the chest and a 19-year-old man shot in the head and buttocks, police said. The woman was rushed to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where she was pronounced at 1:20 a.m.; the man was taken to HUP where doctors declared him dead at 1:05 a.m. Police have no suspects or motive.

INQUIRER: Philadelphia police this morning said they are looking for a 33-year-old city man in connection with the fatal shooting Saturday of Philadelphia police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski. Police identified the suspect at large as Eric Floyd, 33, currently of Clearfield Street, Philadelphia. Police said Floyd had escaped from a halfway house in Reading, and is considered to be armed and dangerous. Police said at least three men were involved in the robbery and shooting of Sgt. Liczbinski, 39, on Saturday just before noon. Liczbinski was responding to the robbery of a bank inside a grocery store around 11:30 a.m. Saturday. […]

INQUIRER: A Philadelphia police officer was shot and killed with a military assault rifle late this morning when he confronted at least two robbers who had just held up a Bank of America branch at a Shoprite supermarket in Port Richmond. At 11:26 a.m., police received a report of a robbery at the American Bank at 3547 Aramingo Avenue. Another officer, responding to a “flash” that had been broadcast on police radio, ran into the robbers at Schiller and Almond streets and shot one of them dead, officials said. One, perhaps two, of the robbers remained at large late this […]

INQUIRER: Philadelphia police are investigating the deaths of six men killed between Saturday morning and last night, all victims of violence. Police have no suspects in custody in a crime spree that Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey had two words for yesterday: “not good.” The job today, Ramsey said, will be to look at “anything that we can do to maybe make the situation less likely” to recur. Among factors that will be explored, he said, is whether the killings occurred in any of the city’s designated high-crime areas and, if so, whether enough officers are assigned there. In the […]