There are times I just can’t figure out The Philadelphia Inquirer. Yes, the alleged offender, if he is guilty, is a really bad guy, and someone who needs to be off the streets forever. But, just as they did in the killing of Samuel Collington, the Inquirer publicly identified an arrested juvenile suspect.

A 15-year-old arrested this weekend is a suspect in three shootings this month, Philly police say

Yazid West has been charged with shooting two teen girls near Temple University. Capt. John Walker said West is also expected to face charges in two other incidents.

by Chris Palmer | Monday, March 21, 2022

A 15-year-old boy arrested by Philadelphia Police this weekend is a suspect in three shootings over the past three weeks, authorities said Monday.

Yazid West was being held on $2 million bail after police say he shot two teenage girls, ages 16 and 17, in a car near Temple University on Friday night. Capt. John Walker said West and his friends had a chance encounter with the girls, who were in a Nissan Altima, around 10 p.m. on the 1400 block of Cecil B. Moore Avenue, and when one of the girls deployed pepper spray out of the car’s window, West responded by firing eight shots at them.

One of the victims was struck in the leg, police said, the other in the back. Both were taken to Temple University Hospital in stable condition.

West and several other teens with him, meanwhile, ran away, but Walker said responding officers pursued the group and arrested West about a mile from the crime scene. Surveillance video of the incident shows West committing the shooting, Walker said. He faces charges including attempted murder, aggravated assault, and weapons violations.

There’s more at the original.

It’s important to note: Mr West can be charged as an adult, despite his age, and he should be.

The Inquirer noted that young Mr West was a suspect in two other shootings, on March 5^th and 15^th. Three shootings, in a span of 13 days — “over the past three weeks,” as Inquirer reporter Chris Palmer put it, was unnecessarily vague — means that Mr West is, allegedly, an extremely volatile and dangerous young man who cannot be trusted to be out on the streets.

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  1500 block North Gratz Street. Click to enlarge.

  The March 5^th incident has Mr West shooting a 14-year-old near Broad Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue, in retaliation for the shooting of a shooting the previous evening, the victim being one of Mr West’s friends. The shooting was captured on surveillance tape.
• The March 15^th incident alleges that Mr West shot into a house in the 1500 block of North Gratz Street, in which the mother had forbidden her son to associate with Mr West and his friends.

North Gratz Street isn’t even a depressed neighborhood. The 1500 block consists of relatively new, practically identical duplexes, and Zillow lists nearby 1729 North Gratz, an older row house, as being for sale listed at $449,999, 1817 North Gratz for $309,000, 1811 West Oxford Street, on the corner of the 1600 block of North Gratz, for $369,000, and 1526 North Gratz, though not on the market, was assessed at $253,000 in 2021.

It would be nice if Inquirer reporters took the time that I have to investigate the neighborhood, to put some perspective on the crimes. The research for the above paragraph took me a whopping ten minutes!

I am reminded of 12-year-old gun-toting Thomas Siderio, Jr, whom the Inquirer is trying to turn into some kind of martyr, even though he (allegedly) shot at Philadelphia Police officers. We know that young Mr Siderio got little parental supervision: his father has been behind bars for the last three years, and that wasn’t his first felony conviction, while his mother also has a criminal record, with two drug cases and other arrests for theft, forgery, contempt of court, and receiving stolen property. The son as primarily lived with a grandmother, but also lived with a great-aunt.

So, will we learn about the parents of young Mr West? He was, again allegedly, a gang-banger wannabe, and had a bad enough reputation that at least one mother forbade her son to associate with him. Where did Mr West live, and who were the adults who were supposed to be supervising him?

But one thing we do know, and that’s the City of Brotherly Love has a real cultural problem, a problem in which adolescents, in which 12 and 14 and 15-year-olds are out on the streets, armed, shooting at people, and their parents or grandparents or guardians are either so clueless that they don’t know about it, or so disinterested that they just don’t care.