Killadelphia

Homicides are down in the City of Brotherly Love, as we have previously reported. On May 25th, we noted that it was possible that Philadelphia could see as few as 450 murders in 2023. Under recently resigned Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, the city saw 499 homicides in 2020 — though there’s reason to suspect that 502 is the correct figure — 562 in 2021, and 516 in 2022.

With 330 officially listed homicides as of October 1st, the 274th day of the year, Philly has seen 1.204 homicides per day, which works out to a projected 439.60 killings for the year.

That decrease in homicides is good news, at least if over 400 murders can be regarded as anything other than bad news, but the killings are still happening. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Police shoot man suspected of killing 3 people in Philly quadruple shooting

The shooter is believed to be a relative of one of the victims, according to police, who said he fled the scene in a blue Honda Pilot.

by Beatrice Forman | Monday, October 2, 2023 | 7:55 AM EDT | Updated: 9:31 AM EDT

Philadelphia police shot a man they suspected of killing three people during a quadruple shooting inside a Crescentville home early Monday morning. Continue reading

‘I condemn the rioting and looting, but . . . . Jenice Armstrong is protesting is that the civilized people aren’t listening to the barbarians.

Would anyone have expected anything different from Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong? She knows that she has to condemn the riots, but she tries to understand the rioters and looters, and wants to say that she can’t really blame them. Continue reading

Hold them accountable!

We have mentioned many times before the ‘reluctance’ of the credentialed media to report on crime these days, because, in the words of Philadelphia Inquirer publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes, who has basically told readers that the newspaper she runs will not report on things which could lead to a negative image of minority populations, that the newspaper she runs will self-censor the truth in favor of “anti-racism” and social justice. We have also said, that black lives don’t matter, at least not to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which only reports on homicides in the City of Brotherly Love in which the victim is an ‘innocent,’ a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl is the victim.

Well, the following killing, not in Philly, but Baltimore, made the national news, because the victim was someone of note! Continue reading

Charges against police officer dismissed, so the Usual Suspects riot

Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, “restorative justice” District Attorney, Larry Krasner, and his army of inept minions, in their eagerness to prosecute city police officers, nevertheless failed in court on Tuesday:

A Philadelphia judge on Tuesday dismissed all charges against former city Police Officer Mark Dial, ruling that prosecutors had not presented enough evidence to show that his fatal shooting of Eddie Irizarry while on-duty last month was a crime.

The result? The Usual Suspects decided that a riot was in order! Continue reading

Killadelphia: Turn on, tune in, get dead!

We have said, many times, that black lives don’t matter, at least not to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which only reports on homicides in the City of Brotherly Love in which the victim is an ‘innocent,’ a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl is the victim. However, as we have also noted, the newspaper sometimes tries to make ‘innocents’ out of some younger homicide victims, as reporter Anna Orso did with  13-year-old Marcus Stokes, shot while allegedly on his way to school, even though he was sitting in a possibly disabled car which had been sitting on a corner for weeks, not on his way to school, and in the car several minutes after he would have been late for school.

Well, this time it’s reporter Ellie Rushing’s turn! Continue reading

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.

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.

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.