INQUIRER: Philadelphia police last night were investigating two homicides in different sections of the city. A 19-year-old man was shot in the abdomen after getting into a fight with three men at Chew Street and Chelten Avenue in East Germantown yesterday afternoon. The victim, who was not identified, was pronounced dead at 1:05 p.m. Police said they were looking for three suspects. A man in his mid-20s died at 6:41 p.m. at Temple University Hospital after being shot in the chest in the 2600 block of Silver Street in North Philadelphia. He was with a 26-year-old man who was shot […]

INQUIRER: Mayor Nutter likened himself and City Council members yesterday to the band of rebels who formed this country as he signed five new gun-control laws that defy the state legislature and legal precedent. “Almost 232 years ago, a group of concerned Americans took matters in their own hands and did what they needed to do by declaring that the time had come for a change,” Nutter said as he signed the bills in front of a table of confiscated weapons outside the police evidence room in City Hall. “We are going to make ourselves independent of the violence that’s […]

INQUIRER: A 36-year-old man died yesterday afternoon within an hour of being beaten by four youths on a SEPTA platform a short distance from City Hall and the Center City Starbucks store where he worked. The attack happened in view of passersby and a transit policeman who was unable to help. Police said last night they had charged one of the teenagers, a 16-year-old student at Simon Gratz High School, with murder and conspiracy in the beating death of Sean Patrick Conroy, who lived in South Philadelphia and managed the Starbucks at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 12th and Market Streets. […]

DAILY NEWS: Easter weekend in the city was nothing to celebrate. Four men were shot to death and two others were riddled with bullets but somehow managed to survive. The latest murder victim was a 22-year-old man shot multiple times on 11th Street near Diamond, North Philadelphia, at about 6 p.m. yesterday. He was pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital. A 24-year-old man was shot to death shortly after 2:30 a.m. yesterday in the Phuong Phanh Coffee Shop, a Vietnamese restaurant on 5th Street near Duncannon Avenue in Logan, police said. He was killed with a single gunshot inside the […]

INQUIRER: A 62-year-old man was killed this morning in the Stenton section of Philadelphia and a 35-year-old woman has been arrested for the slaying, police said. The homicide was reported shortly after 6 a.m. in the 7900 block of Pickering Avenue, police said. Unspecified weapons were recovered at the scene. The woman turned herself in, police said.

INQUIRER: Police are investigating the fatal shooting of a 26-year-old man in North Philadelphia early this afternoon. Authorities said the victim, whose name has not been released, was shot in the back and leg about 12:30 p.m. while in the 1500 block of North Myrtlewood Street. He was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital where he was pronounced dead shortly after the shooting.

DAILY NEWS: Omar Little visited City Hall last night — and didn’t drop a single body. “This is an honor,” said Michael Kenneth Williams, who plays stick-up boy Omar Little on the HBO hit “The Wire.” “We’re in City Hall, the mayor’s office.” Williams was one of more than a half-dozen “Wire” stars who appeared at a special screening of the series finale last night at City Hall. Mayor Nutter — a die-hard fan — dreamed up the event, which was sanctioned by HBO. “I’ve learned a great deal,” Nutter said of the show, which depicts life on the mean […]

INQUIRER: The body of a man was found in a car in West Oak Lane last night, police said. About 9:20 p.m., police discovered Steeve Charles, 24, behind the driver’s seat of a Nissan Maxima near his residence in the 7500 block of Thouron Street. He had been shot at least twice, and was pronounced dead at the scene shortly before 10 p.m. Police are investigating to determine suspects and motives.

INQUIRER: Joseph Kelly Sr., 77, was eastbound on the Expressway about 1:50 a.m. when he spotted the man in the wheelchair stuck on the expressway’s outer eastbound lane near the 15th Street off-ramp. The wheelchair was facing traffic heading in the wrong direction. It was not immediately clear why the man in the wheelchair was on the expressway or how he had become stuck. Kelly stopped his minivan on the right shoulder, got out of his vehicle and crossed three lanes of traffic to offer help to the wheelchair-bound man, police said. As Kelly pushed the wheelchair back toward the […]

DAILY NEWS: In West Philadelphia, the body of a woman who had been stabbed to death lay facedown amid trash outside a vacant rowhouse. In Crescentville, construction workers found a dead man with a gunshot blast to the head.It was all part of a bloody breakfast hour for Philadelphia police yesterday, who hurried to investigate two bodies found within 20 minutes in separate incidents just after 7 a.m. Detectives already were juggling one homicide and two other deaths from overnight. The five deaths came after a three-day homicide hiatus; yesterday’s carnage boosted the city’s murder tally for the year to […]

DAILY NEWS: In 12 hours, from Saturday evening to yesterday morning, two people were killed and four others wounded following numerous shootings and a hit-and-run. One of the deaths has been declared a homicide. The other, in which Ismael Valentin, 27, of the city’s Mayfair section, was shot numerous times at the 7400 Apartments on Roosevelt Boulevard near Bleigh Avenue in the city’s Rhawnhurst section, remains under investigation, homicide Sgt. Ron McClane said. The shooting occurred at 4:48 p.m. Saturday inside a stairwell, but Valentin managed to stumble outside the apartment complex, where he died a short time later, police […]

Apparently, if you vote for Vince Fumo, he will come to your house and make your family dinner. Every night! But in all seriousness, NONE of the people pictured in this commercial are truly threatened by the city’s spiraling homicide rate. The senator knows this. As such, this commercial grossly misrepresents the nature of the problem and the people most likely become just another chalk outline on the sidewalks of North and West Philadelphia. It reminds us the way they used to get Pat Boone to cover Little Richard songs so that, you know, white people could relate. Shame on […]

INQUIRER: A 43-year old man was shot and killed this morning in Philadelphia, police said. The unidentified man was found with a gunshot wound to the head in the 2500 block of South 66th Street at about 7:23 a.m. He was pronounced on the scene by medics. Yesterday, police responded to the 3800 block of Parrish Street at 3:13 a.m. and found Anthony Saunders, 39, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Saunders, of 4600 block of Apple Lane in Deptford, had been shot in the face and body, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene at 3:26 a.m. No […]