Category Archives: Crime

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Just plain senseless

People tend to try to make some sense of events that seem entirely senseless, but sometimes it’s an exercise in futility. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Nicholas Heyward-Walton, photo via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.

Philadelphia man arrested, charged with shooting 80-year-old man in the head on Labor Day

Police arrested Nicholas Heyward-Walton on Tuesday, after accusing him of shooting an 80-year-old man in the head and neck on Labor Day.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Wednesday, September 6, 2023 | 2:29 PM EDT

Philadelphia police have arrested a man they say shot an 80-year-old in the head on Labor Day in what appears to have been a random attack, police said Wednesday.

The victim is now in critical condition, officials said.

Shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, police responded to the 2600 block of Tasker Street for a report of a shooting. When officers arrived, they found the 80-year-old man, whom police did not identify, unresponsive in the street, with gunshot wounds to his head and neck.

Police took him to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was in critical condition Wednesday, said Capt. James Kearney, head of the nonfatal shootings unit.

On Tuesday, police arrested Nicholas Heyward-Walton, 25, at his home on the 1500 block of South Bailey Street. He was charged with attempted murder and related offenses, police said.

No, of course the Inquirer didn’t include Mr Heyward-Walton’s mugshot; I got that from Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News. The left hate Fox 29, because they report all the serious crime news.

You know what else the newspaper didn’t include? Mr Heyward-Walton’s rap sheet! This fine young gentleman was already out on bond for crimes including terroristic threats, PA 18 §2706, which, depending on circumstances, is either first degree misdemeanor or third degree felony. He was released on August 14th on that one.

But the young man has previous convictions, including criminal mischief, PA 18 §3304(a)(1), a third degree felony, for which the penalty includes up to seven years in the state penitentiary, and criminal trespass, PA 18 §3503(a)(1)(ii), a second degree felony, which carries a sentence of up to ten years in prison.

So, guess to how many years Mr Heyward-Walton was sentenced. If you guessed zero, you guessed correctly. On October 6, 2021, he was sentenced to a maximum of two years probation! And yes, of course it was a plea bargain arrangement: the court record states: “Guilty plea – negotiated”.

Those two years are not quite up yet, so he could be sent straight to jail, but for only another month.

Yet, if the suspect had been sentenced to just two years in prison, and assuming he had not been released early, he would have still been in jail on Labor Day, and — assuming that he is the actual Labor Day shooter — his victim would not have been shot. If he had been sentenced to two years behind bars, he’d be looking forward to getting out of jail next month.

Instead, an 80-year-old man is in the hospital, fighting for his life, while this misunderstood 25-year-old is looking at, if his victim succumbs to his injuries, perhaps life in prison without the possibility of parole.

So, did District Attorney Larry Krasner do the suspect any real favors? Mr Krasner and his minions are very much opposed to ‘mass incarceration,’ but if Mr Heyward-Walton had been incarcerated for just those two years, he wouldn’t be looking at being incarcerated for the rest of his miserable life.

Would the suspect have learned anything had he been locked up? Would he have learned that hey, maybe prison isn’t a great place to be? Would he have been at least somewhat rehabilitated? There’s really no way of knowing. But what he did learn, by not being sent to jail, is that he could get away with stupid stuff, that Mr Krasner and his fellow travelers aren’t really interested in punishing anyone for crimes.

And here’s the kicker, the article’s final sentence:

There was no altercation between the victim and the shooter, said Kearney, and the shooting appeared to be random.

If this turns out to be the case, the shooting becomes truly senseless. Even someone with a room temperature IQ ought to know that trying to kill someone is something that would probably not be ignored.

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Killadelphia: Street Justice! It seems as though the neighborhood didn't wait for the Philadelphia Police to make an arrest for the murder of Hezekiah Bernard

We asked, on the last day of August, how a 12-year-old boy can just disappear in the City of Brotherly Love, and nobody noticed until his dead body showed up in the trash more than a week later.

Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News provided the map of the two murder sites. Click to enlarge.

A teen killed Saturday in West Philly was a person of interest in a 12-year-old’s murder, sources say

Hundreds of comments on social media had called for vigilante justice against Tysheer Hankinson, who was considered by police to be a person of interest in Hezekiah Bernard’s death in August.

by Vinny Vella and Ellie Rushing | Sunday, September 3, 2023 | 2:25 PM EDT

An Upper Darby teen who was a person of interest in the killing of a 12-year-old boy found dead in a dumpster in Philadelphia last month and who himself had survived a shooting in April was killed early Saturday morning, law enforcement sources said.

Tysheer Shahe Hankinson, 16, was found just after 1 a.m. shot multiple times in his neck, face, left leg, and body on Poplar Street near 55th in West Philadelphia, according to police. Medics took him to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

There was no information about a suspect Sunday, and no murder weapon was recovered.

Hankinson was considered a potential suspect and person of interest in the death of Hezekiah Bernard, whose body, wrapped in plastic and shot in the head, was found in a dumpster outside of a public housing complex in West Philadelphia on Aug. 23, according to law enforcement sources. Bernard had been dead for at least 24 hours, investigators said.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s subtitle provided the real information: if there were “Hundreds of comments on social media had called for vigilante justice against Tysheer Hankinson,” then the people of the neighborhood knew who they believed killed young Mr Bernard. Continue reading →

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Killadelphia: How does a 12-year-old boy go missing for over a week, and nobody noticed?

Body of 12-year-old boy, shot in the back of the head, discovered in the trash, after a Philadelphia Housing Authority worker had already collected the garbage bin and taken it to another PHA facility. The boy’s body fell out during the process.

The body of a 12-year-old boy was found in a dumpster in West Philadelphia, police say

Hezekiah Bernard, 12, was found dead in West Philadelphia last week.

by Ellie Rushing and Chris Palmer | Thursday, August 31, 2023 | 11:32 AM EDT | Updated: 3:54 PM EDT

The body found in a dumpster in West Philadelphia last week has been identified as a 12-year-old boy, police said Thursday.

Hezekiah Bernard

Police had said they recovered the body of a young man on the morning of Aug. 23 inside a trash can at a public housing complex at 55th and Cherry Streets.

But for nearly a week, they did not know who he was — or that he was a child.

On Tuesday, he was identified as Hezekiah Bernard, according to Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, head of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Homicide Unit.

Surprisingly enough, The Philadelphia Inquirer printed young Mr Bernard’s photo.

Bernard’s death has been ruled a homicide. He was shot once in the back of the head and his body was wrapped in plastic, said Ransom. It was not yet known when he was killed, or how long he had been in the dumpster before police recovered his body.

Really? Wouldn’t the police have a good guess due to the missing person report?

Ransom said Bernard had not been reported missing in recent weeks.

So, a 12-year-old boy goes missing, for over a week, and it wasn’t reported?

Who were his parents? Who was the adult responsible for young Mr Bernard?

An autopsy was conducted, but investigators weren’t able to figure out who the victim was, Ransom said. Detectives distributed fliers in West Philadelphia, and on Aug. 29, Bernard’s relatives reached out to the Medical Examiner’s Office and were able to confirm that Bernard was the victim.

“Relatives” may not have been the people actually responsible for the child’s care, so we can’t automatically blame them. But shouldn’t someone have noticed that he was missing? Yeah, my mind is good at speculating what could have happened, but there are too many possibilities, none of them good.

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Killadelphia: It’s official: (Alleged) Kingsessing mass murderer is Just Plain Nuts

We have previously reported on Kimbrady Carriker, the fine gentleman from Philadelphia accused of a murder rampage which left five people in the Kingsessing neighborhood dead.

As soon as the name of Kimbrady Carriker was released, his social media were investigated, and photos of Mr Carriker in female dress led to immediate speculation that he was, like Audrey Hale in Nashville, yet another transgender killer. Well, that led to Philly officials quickly denying it:

While he acknowledged the social media images that appear to show Carriker wearing women’s clothing and jewelry, Asa Khalif, a member of the LGBTQ advisory committee for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, condemned the “violent” language coming from the “conservative press” about Carriker’s gender identity and shared what the district attorney’s office knows firsthand about Carriker’s gender identity.

“Appear to show”? No, there’s no “appear to show” here, but actually show. Why would Mr Khalif, who supports the homosexual and transgender community, and must surely not be offended by, or see anything wrong, with cross-dressing, want to mealy-mouth things?

“The suspect has not identified themselves as trans. They have only identified themselves as male,” Khalif said at Wednesday’s news conference. “But the language spewed out by the conservative press is violent and is dangerous, and it’s targeting trans women of color. It’s rallying the community to be violent, and we’re better than that.”

I saw a video of Mr Khalif’s statement, and while he stated that Mr Carriker had not identified as transgender or anything other than male, I also noticed that he went out of his way to use “they/them” pronouns to refer to the suspect. Did Mr Carriker express a preference for such to be used? If so, it hasn’t made the credentialed press, but speaking with the District Attorney at his side, he might have been clued into something the DA’s office knew but hasn’t been made public.

Well, now it’s official: Mr Carriker is cookoo for Cocoa Puffs mentally incompetent to stand trial:

The accused gunman in the Kingsessing mass shooting has been found incompetent to stand trial, pausing his criminal case

Kimbrady Carriker, charged with killing five people during a multi-day shooting rampage, will receive inpatient mental health treatment before his court case can proceed.

by Chris Palmer | Tuesday, August 29, 2023

The man accused of killing five people during a multi-day shooting rampage in Kingsessing earlier this summer has been ordered to receive inpatient mental health treatment before his court case can proceed.

A court-appointed psychiatrist found Kimbrady Carriker incompetent to stand trial, his public defender said in court Tuesday. Carriker, 40, will be sent to a state-run psychiatric facility to receive treatment while his criminal case — which is awaiting a preliminary hearing — is put on indefinite hold.

Carriker is accused of fatally shooting five people and wounding several others during a shooting spree in early July around 56th Street and Chester and Springfield Avenues. He faces a host of charges, including first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault, and illegal gun possession, and is being held without bail.

I noticed that Chris Palmer, the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who wrote the story, did not use the “they/them” pronouns the way Mr Khalif did, but the masculine ones. And the Inky, which normally does not publish mugshots, did include Mr Carrikers, a not-particularly-flattering one, but one which nevertheless didn’t show him in drag. No, Mr Palmer did not include the Far Side cartoon I added, but at some point, don’t we have to admit that all mass murderers are Just Plain Nuts?

A number of aspects of the case remained unclear Tuesday, including a potential motive, and no new details were revealed during the hearing before Municipal Court Judge Wendy L. Pew. Attorneys did not provide specifics on Carriker’s mental health assessment, and he was not present for the proceeding.

It’s a common theme: everybody wants to know why he (allegedly) did it, everybody wants to try to understand the crime. But if he is legitimately nuts, perhaps there is no motive of which anyone can make any sense.

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Do only those blacks killed by whites really matter?

When I heard that a deranged white man male, who hated black Americans, murdered three black people in a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, I pretty much expected the editorial response.

Progress exists, but Dr. King’s dream remains deferred | Editorial

America still has a ways to go to live up to the self-evident ideals of equality etched in the Declaration of Independence and invoked 60 years ago by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

by The Editorial Board | Monday, January 28, 2023

Sixty years ago this week, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic speech in Washington, D.C., in which he dreamed that one day his four children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character.”

While much progress has been made in realizing King’s dream, America still has a ways to go to live up to the self-evident ideals etched in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” This was made painfully clear this weekend when a white man gunned down three Black people at a Dollar General store in Florida.

The Jacksonville sheriff, who reviewed the gunman’s racist writings, said the 21-year-old shooter “hated Black people.”

The killings join a long list of mass murders fueled by racist hate, including a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store in 2022, a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019, and a Charleston, S.C., church in 2015, where the white man who slaughtered nine people in a Bible study group said the massacre was “worth it.”

It was hardly just The Philadelphia Inquirer. President Biden condemned ‘white supremacy’ in the aftermath of the killings, and The New York Times, The Washington Post, and plenty of others told us how horrible it was.

Yet, when I looked at the Philadelphia Shooting Victims Database, I saw that 19 people had been shot in the City of Brotherly Love over the Friday-Saturday-Sunday weekend. That is 19 attempted murders, of which three were successful, with 15 of the victims, and two of the deceased victims, being black, and two more victims, including one deceased, being Hispanic. In the Inquirer’s terms, 17 “black and brown” victims, with three killed.

And I had to wonder: were the three black people, two men and a woman, somehow more dead than the three Philadelphians sent untimely to their eternal rewards?

According to the St Louis Police Department, there had been 105 homicides in the Gateway City as of Monday, August 28th. Of those 105 people murdered, 93, or 88.57%, were black, in a city in which 44.8% of the population are black, with another 4.0% being listed as biracial.

More, 79 out of 83 identified suspects, 95.18%, are also black.

No one wants to talk about that, of course, but someone should: why are the three black Floridians killed by a white guy, who was “once involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for examination“, so very worthy of editorial and presidential note, while the vast majority of black victims are mostly ignored, barely worth a mention in many newspapers.

As we have previously documented, unless the inclusion of race is useful for the newspaper’s political position, as the Tyre Nichols case has been,and at whict race becomes totally relevant, the Inquirer deliberately scrubs race from crime reports. Yet, in the editorial quoted above, the Editorial Board were quick to note the race of the killer and his victims, all for political gain.

According to Broad + Liberty’s Philadelphia Homicide Tracker, last updated on Friday, August 25th, out of 226 homicides in which the race of the victim could be identified from their sources — normally Philadelphia Police Department emails — there had been 4 Asians, 11 whites, 42 Hispanics, and 169 blacks murdered in Philly. The Philly Police do not provide a database in the same fashion as the St Louis Police, but it appears that 74.78% of murder victims in Philly have been black, and another 18.58% Hispanic. The editors of the Inky don’t want readers to have those numbers, for whatever reasons they have.

But all of these people are just as dead as the three in Jacksonville!

Perhaps the editors of these great newspapers see, as President Biden claimed, ‘white supremacy’ as “the most dangerous terrorist threat” to America, but at least in the number of people killed, it sure doesn’t seem that way.

All of those black murder victims, the vast majority of whom were not killed by whites? As far as I can see from politicians and the credentialed media, they just don’t count.

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Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader endangers citizens by refusing to publish a mugshot

The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States specifies:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

And thus we come to the case of George Aldridge:

Man charged in 3 Lexington sexual assaults has been tied to another case, police say

By Christopher Leach | Monday, August 28, 2023 | 9:17 AM EDT | Updated: 10:01 AM EDT

George Aldridge, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

A Kentucky man previously charged in three Lexington sexual assault cases is now facing charges in another sexual assault due to a breakthrough discovery by a Kentucky State Police investigative team, officials announced Monday.

George Aldridge, 53, was indicted last month on a charge of first-degree rape in Jefferson County, according to court records. KSP said the incident happened in 2005 and investigators solved it nearly two decades later thanks to DNA evidence.

The new indictment adds to several other offenses Aldridge has been accused of: he was indicted on two counts of first-degree rape, two counts of first-degree sexual abuse, two counts of first-degree sodomy, three counts of kidnapping and one count of first-degree wanton endangerment in April, according to court records.

Those charges stem from three abductions and sexual assaults between 2009 and 2016 in Fayette County, Lexington police previously said.

No, of course, following the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, the Lexington Herald-Leader did not include the suspect’s mugshot; I had to get it from the Fayette County Detention Center records.

But this 5’9″ tall, 285 pound man is clearly a danger to any woman he encounters, and he does have a bail amount set. Shouldn’t the women in Fayette County knows what this fine gentleman looks like, so they can be on alert should they happen to see him? Continue reading →

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

How could this have happened? After all, this was illegal! Surely, surely! gun control laws should have prevented it!

Well, it’s Montgomery County, not Philadelphia, so the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, ‘progressive’ District Attorney, Let ’em loose Larry Krasner, won’t have anything to do with it.

Abington-Cheltenham football game suspended after student found with a gun

The Cheltenham High School student was arrested on felony weapons offenses, including possession of a firearm, police said. Players were safely dismissed to the Abington High School locker rooms.

by Diane Mastrull | Saturday, August 26, 2023

Friday night’s football game between Montgomery County rivals Abington and Cheltenham High Schools was suspended at halftime when a parent noticed a student with a gun in the stadium, police said.

When police found the student at Abington High School’s stadium shortly before 8:30 p.m., a handgun with an extended magazine was protruding from his waist area and the youth was in possession of a second, loaded magazine, police said in a statement posted on Facebook. Continue reading →

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SEPTA should be paid for by the people who use it, not people who can’t use its service

Our house in Jim Thorpe.

I used to live in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, fifty miles north of foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, SEPTA, did not have a bus or train service up into Carbon County; I commuted every day. Why, then, I asked myself, was I taxed to support and subsidize the people who did have SEPTA service in Philadelphia and its collar counties. I no longer live in the Keystone State, so this story doesn’t affect me, but the question still remains: why should my old neighbors and friends in Pennsylvania, many of whom are out of reach of SEPTA’s service area, be taxed to support a system they cannot use?

SEPTA wants more state sales-tax revenue to avoid ‘draconian’ service cuts next spring

A change in the law would give SEPTA an additional $190 million from the state sales tax each year to run its buses, trolleys and subways.

by Thomas Fitzgerald | Thursday, August 24, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

In an effort to secure desperately needed funding, SEPTA officials are lobbying for a proposal in Harrisburg that would increase by about 45% the annual share of state sales-tax revenue devoted to paying for public transportation.

If their efforts are successful, the state’s Public Transportation Trust Fund would receive 6.4% of the money generated by the sales tax, up from 4.4%, generating an additional $295 million annually for public transit operations across the state. The sales tax itself would not increase.

SEPTA estimates that it would get an additional $190 million annually, with a $65.6 million increase for Pittsburgh Regional Transit and $38.8 million more for other systems, based on the state’s funding formula, which allocates dollars to transit agencies.

“We’ll really be able to prevent a draconian service reduction and extraordinary fare increases,” SEPTA CEO Leslie S. Richards said Wednesday when asked about the proposal. “That is what we will be left with when we get to next spring, if we don’t see a way out of this looming fiscal cliff.”

Part of that “looming fiscal cliff” would be from the $75,000 per year raise that the SEPTA Board gave CEO Leslie Richards just last May:

A panel of three board members reviewed publicly available salaries for the leaders of other large transit systems to help determine Richards’ salary, SEPTA said in a statement announcing the reappointment.

Perhaps, but shouldn’t that also be based on whether Mrs Richards was actually doing her job well?

SEPTA has been plagued by delayed service and accidents, with chronic shortfalls in essential staff:

One in six budgeted engineer positions is unfilled, per SEPTA figures, and the total number of train operators and trainees is 12% lower than it was in January 2019. Funding isn’t the problem, although overall the agency is generally worried about its fiscal future.

Billy Penn also reported that workers are leaving faster than positions can be filled. If Mrs Richards cannot keep these, to use the Democrats’ mantra, “good, well-paying, union jobs” filled, what does that say about her job performance?

Early Monday morning (June 12, 2023), a Trenton train was delayed because of “manpower issues.” A park and ride service at one station on the line was repeatedly canceled last week “due to operator unavailability.” On Friday (June 9, 2023), trips on the Market-Frankford and Broad Street subway lines were canceled for lack of workers. “Operator unavailability” is frequently given as the reason for delays and cancellations, especially on certain bus lines.

The unreliable service has sparked doubts SEPTA can step in to provide a needed workaround to the highway collapse.

“SEPTA better commit to quick and significant improvements of service or the city is going to see a major exodus from any northern suburb employees,” rider Kristen McCabe of Media wrote on Sunday.

Yet, despite all of that, despite SEPTA’s inability to manage the assets and service it currently has, there’s significant political pressure to build the Roosevelt Boulevard subway line, guesstimated to cost between $2.5 and 3.4 billion, in year 2000 dollars. We have previously noted The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story in which the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, SEPTA, admitted that they had “lost control of the train cars.”

The Biden Administration and the global warming climate change activists want us to all leave our cars behind — if we would even be allowed to own them — and depend on public transportation as much as possible. The Philadelphia Tribune reported that 42% of Black households and 50% of impoverished households in Philly don’t own a car, yet SEPTA has been hit with decreased ridership:

Ridership remains well below pre-pandemic levels, and SEPTA needs those passengers back, officials say. Federal pandemic aid will run out by April 2024, and the agency depends on rider fares to make enough money to operate.

Really, who would want to depend on SEPTA? The trains are filthy, crime on board the buses and trains, and at the train and subway stations, has been increasing, and too many of the stations have become de facto homeless shelters, littered with trash and used hypodermic needles left by junkies.

That decreased ridership? It has been politically correct to lay the blame for that on the panicdemic — spelled exactly the way I see it, as a huge overreaction — and the fact that some Center City office workers who were able to work remotely during the COVID-19 shutdowns have found that pretty good, and are still doing so. But the crime and the filth are also to blame. It seems that the good Democrats in Philly, who gave 81.44% of their votes to Joe Biden, the President who wants them to use public transportation, aren’t quite so eager to ride SEPTA’s buses and trains.

And so we have Leslie Richards, $425,000 a year Leslie Richards, wanting to make the people in Jim Thorpe and Summit Hill and Mahanoy City have more of the sales taxes they pay go to help SEPTA, rather than those dollars coming back to their communities, even though Mrs Richards has proven that she cannot manage the system she oversees. SEPTA should be paid for not by the citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but by the people who use the service, and fares should be increased to support that service.

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Whenever there is a truth you cannot tell, that is a truth you must tell!

We have previously noted that the Most Rev Salvatore Cordileone has stated that the Archdiocese of San Francisco would probably have to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Well, the time has come. From The New York Times:

Archdiocese of San Francisco Becomes the Latest to File for Bankruptcy

About a dozen dioceses and archdioceses in the United States are currently in bankruptcy proceedings as a result of multiple lawsuits alleging sexual abuse of children.

by Ruth Graham | Monday, August 21, 2023

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, photo from Archdiocese of San Francisco.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco, known for its outspoken conservative leadership, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone announced on Monday. The filing is intended to protect the archdiocese from what Archbishop Cordileone described as more than 500 civil lawsuits filed against it under a state law passed in 2019 that extended the statute of limitations for civil claims in child sexual abuse cases.

“We believe the bankruptcy process is the best way to provide a compassionate and equitable solution for survivors of abuse while ensuring that we continue the vital ministries to the faithful and to the communities that rely on our services and charity,” Archbishop Cordileone said in a letter addressed to Catholics in San Francisco.

Archbishop Cordileone signaled the bankruptcy earlier this month, warning publicly that the filing was “very likely.”

The article author, Ruth Graham, “is a Dallas-based national correspondent covering religion, faith and values for The New York Times. She graduated from Wheaton College and previously worked as a writer and reporter at Slate.” Telling us that she used to write for Slate is telling us that she’s a liberal, but what else would you expect from the Times? While she was very good at telling readers that several other diocese and archdiocese have been forced to file for bankruptcy over the cover ups of sexual abuse claims, she managed to write 547 words, and never mention what everybody already knows, that this is a crisis of having homosexual priests. Continue reading →