Tag Archives: #Crime

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Mayor Jim Kenney just can’t think things through

On Tuesday, September 27, 2022, Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) signed an executive order banning the possession of firearms and other deadly weapons at city parks and recreation centers, something that even The Philadelphia Inquirer recognized as likely to draw a legal challenge.

It didn’t take long: on Monday, October 3rd, the executive order was tossed by a judge:

Judge bars Philadelphia from enforcing Mayor Jim Kenney’s ban on guns at rec centers and playgrounds

The lawsuit cited a Pennsylvania state law that prohibits the any city or county from passing gun-control measures stricter than state gun laws.

by Robert Moran | Monday, October 3, 2022

A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge on Monday blocked the city from enforcing an executive order Mayor Jim Kenney signed last week banning guns at recreation centers and playgrounds following the fatal shooting of a Parks and Recreation employee last month.

The Gun Owners of America, on behalf of several state residents, filed a lawsuit last Tuesday, the day Kenney signed his order. After hearing arguments Friday, Judge Joshua H. Roberts issued his ruling siding with the plaintiffs and ordering Philadelphia to be “permanently enjoined” from enforcing Kenney’s ban.

The lawsuit cited Pennsylvania state law that prohibits any city or county from passing gun-control measures. The preemption law, which the city has repeatedly sought to overturn, bans local government from passing gun-control measures that are stricter than state gun laws.

Andrew B. Austin, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, said in an emailed statement: “For my part, I am gratified that the Court of Common Pleas was able to so quickly resolve this suit, but that was in large part because the law is so explicit: The City is not allowed to regulate possession of firearms in any manner.”

There’s more at the original, and the pre-emption law is pretty clear and explicit.

The right to keep and bear arms is pretty explicit in our Constitution, and I support that without reservation. In this, I am going to ignore the constitutional and legal issues, but ask the obvious question: just what would Mr Kenney’s executive order have done were it allowed to go into effect?

A ban on the possession of firearms at city parks would probably be mostly obeyed by legal gun owners in the city. If someone has gone to the effort of obtaining a license to carry a firearm, he is pretty much a law-abiding citizen.

But the impetus for the Mayor’s order, the killing of Mill Creek Recreation Center worker Tiffany Fletcher by a stray bullet allegedly fired by 14-year-old Makie Jones, was not something that the executive order would have prevented had it been in place at the time. Young Mr Jones was using a “ghost gun,” a privately-manufactured weapon put together with spare parts and having no serial number, which had an extended magazine. Mr Jones supposedly saw some of his enemies, and a gun battle ensued:

The killing came after a shootout around 1 p.m. Friday between Jones and at least three other people near the rec center on the 4700 block of Brown Street, Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said Monday. Vanore said it was not clear what sparked the gunfire, but that investigators later recovered 12 fired cartridge casings at the scene — eight on one side of the street, and four on the other.

Does the Mayor seriously believe that a 14-year-old who was willing to obtain and carry a ghost gun with an extended magazine, and engage in a gun battle with his enemies would care about an executive order banning the carrying of firearms in a city park? Anyone with any sense at all — a definition which certainly excludes Mr Kenney — would know that someone like the alleged killer wouldn’t care at all about such a restriction, not that one would suspect young Mr Jones of having read the Inquirer to even know of its existence.

One question to which I have never received an answer is just how Mr Kenney thought his executive order could be enforced? Was he hoping that Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw would have Philadelphia Police officers stationed at the rec centers, stopping and frisking everyone there for a weapon? I saw nothing like that in the media, though, to be fair, I could have missed it.

Back to the main article cited:

Kevin Lessard, a spokesperson for Kenney, said in an emailed statement: “We are reviewing today’s decision and are disappointed by the outcome, which as it stands prevents city employees from making the reasonable request that anyone with a firearm or deadly weapon leave a recreation facility. Since 2019, nearly 300 reported incidents of gun violence have occurred at city recreation facilities, in addition to dozens of other incidents of violence with a deadly weapon.”

OK, then: the mayor was apparently counting not on the police, but on unarmed city employees, employees like the late Tiffany Fletcher, to ask people spotted carrying firearms to leave. Has the Mayor forgotten assaults by three ‘unruly’ teenaged girls on July 21st, which led to vandalism, led the city to drain the pool and close it for the rest of the season. City Parks and Recreation said that the pool was closed due to concerns for the safety of staff and visitors, and that this pool, in the crime-ridden Kensington section, has had many problems, including multiple break-ins after hours. The Parks Department did not say that the staff had all just up and quit, or refused to work at that pool again, but the city has had a serious shortage of lifeguards for the pools, and opened only 50 of the 65 pools in the city. If the city had to close the McVeigh Recreation Center because three uncivilized, but apparently unarmed, brats were disruptive, and vandalized the place, just how can he expect unarmed staff to confront and ask to leave someone they believe is carrying a firearm?

This is a huge problem when it comes to the left: they just can’t seem to think things through! Anyone with any common sense ought to have realized that an enforcement incident, the way Mr Lessard described it, is too fraught with danger in a city like Killadelphia; it’s a way to get an unarmed staffer killed.

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It wasn’t a difficult prediction to make

I wrote, on September 27th:

As we have noted many times before, The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl. So, while a 14-year-old boy being killed would normally be seen as the death of an “innocent,” a planned “hit” on a group of junior varsity football players certainly sounds like there was something to have generated bad blood between at least one of the players and a “clique of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families.” The dead player might not have been involved in whatever dispute the “clique beefers” had, but the obvious assumption is that at least someone among the departing players might not have been quite the “innocent” the Inky would like to make him out to be.

When the Inky stops telling us what a good and noble fellow the dead boy was, we’ll know a lot more.

Subsequent reports in the Inquirer have indicated that yes, this was a gang hit an unfortunate action by a “clique of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,”[1]We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes … Continue reading but that the Philadelphia Police believe that the targeted individual was a 17-year-old black male who had been shot himself in the commission of a carjacking and has been “referenced several times for his criminal activity, and who was not on one of the football teams, but the only victim who was killed, 14-year-old Nicolas Elizalde, was apparently an innocent casualty rather than being part of such a gang clique himself. That means it’s time for the Inky to run a nice story on him!

The mother of Roxborough shooting victim Nicolas Elizalde, 14, has a message: ‘He isn’t a number’

“He was happier than he’s ever been,” Meredith Elizalde said of her son, 14, starting the school year and joining the football team.

by Ellie Rushing and Kristen A. Graham | Saturday, October 1, 2022

Nicolas Elizalde had begged his mother to let him play football for years, but she always said no, too worried about the injuries that can come with the sport.

This year, Nick was starting high school in a new area, and needed a way to make friends. So Meredith Elizalde gave in. And in August, they trekked to the athletic store to buy him a new pair of cleats.

They were the cleats that she saw from afar on Tuesday, as she ran toward the sound of gunfire outside Roxborough High School.

But even before she saw them, she knew.

There are dozens more paragraphs, plus photos, in the Inquirer original, telling us that young Mr Elizalde was a good kid who never got into any trouble. Our heartstrings are pulled when we are told that his corneas were donated to help save the vision of two other people.

But despite what his mother said, young Mr Elizalde is just a number, number 401 in the list of people murdered in the City of Brotherly Love. Most of the people killed in Philadelphia are just as bad a guys as the guys who killed them, and Mr Elizalde, like Tiffany Fletcher just a few weeks earlier, will be forgotten in not much more time, as the number of dead bodies continues to rise. As of the end of Thursday, September 29th, two more Philadelphians were shot in broad daylight walking down the public streets, in an obviously targeted hit — note that the victims started to run as the shooter got out of the car, because they recognized that this was a hit, in a way innocent people most probably would not — and no story in the Inky tells us what we already knew: these were just as much gang-bangers as the guy who shot them.

Josef Stalin purportedly said, “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” There were 562 people murdered in Philly last year, and if the current year is slightly behind that pace, it’s not behind by much, and unless the daily average of murders falls dramatically, there will be something on the order of 540 to 550 homicides in 2022.

And this is why young Mr Elizalde really is just a number. Why is he just a number? It’s because nobody really cares! Most Philadelphians aren’t out there shooting people, but the people who know who the shooters are still keep their mouths shut, still don’t help the police solve murders.

Some of that is clearly fear, but the police have set up well-publicized anonymous tip lines which could at least get the police pointed in the right direction. Some of it is that so many residents just plain hate the cops and hate law enforcement, as evidenced by the fact that the voters re-elected, by landslide margins, a District Attorney who loves to prosecute cops but does not want to send street criminals to jail. And some of it is a sense that most of these killings are public service homicides, one group of bad guys taking out another group of bad guys. In that, and yes, I recognize that I’m being an [insert slang term for the anus here] for pointing it out, but young Mr Elizalde was simply collateral damage.

References

References
↑1 We were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”.
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Punishment before the trial?

We noted, on September 2nd, the case of Eyvette Hunter, 52, a nurse accused of deliberately killing a 97-year-old patient because he was agitated and difficult. Miss Hunter just had her bail reduced and trial scheduled . . . for next June.

Eyvette Hunter, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Bond reduced for Lexington nurse accused of murder. Trial date set for June 2023

by Taylor Six | Thursday, September 29, 2022 | 5:19 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, September 30, 2022 | 7:30 PM EDT

Fayette Circuit Court Judge Thomas Travis has granted a $50,000 bond reduction for a former Lexington nurse accused of killing a man through an unauthorized injection.

Eyvette Hunter, 52, was indicted on one charge of murder and arrested on Aug. 23, according to court records. Police say Hunter’s maltreatment caused the death of James Morris, a 97-year-old patient who died at Baptist Health Lexington on May 5.

On Thursday afternoon, she appeared in court after her attorney filed a motion to lower her bond, which was set at $100,000. Hunter’s attorney, Daniel Whitley, successfully requested that the bond be reduced 50% to $50,000 full cash, according to court testimony.

Mr Whitley argued before the judge that the previous bail was simply beyond the means of the family, while the prosecutors, Aubrey McGuire and Traci Caneer, were strongly opposed, and stated than Miss Hunter’s bail should be increased, not reduced. Miss Hunter, if her family make bail, will not be required to wear an ankle monitor, given that she has no past criminal record, and is a low flight risk.

Herald-Leader reporter Taylor Six, from her Twitter biography.

A lengthy section follows, containing the Commonwealth’s allegations against Miss Hunter, which are contained in my previous article on the case, so I needn’t repeat them here; you can also read the Lexington Herald-Leader’s account here. It was the conclusion of Taylor Six’s news article which got to me:

Whitley also said that before the commonwealth indicted Hunter for murder, they neglected to consult with a medical examiner, nor did they seek to do any toxicology to determine the levels of Ativan, or any other substance, in his system at the time of death.

The commonwealth has yet to tender any discovery from any witness stating that the alleged victim died due to the use of Ativan, Whitley said in court documents.

A trial date was set for June 12 and is scheduled to last four days.

Now, what does this mean? Does the prosecution not already have enough evidence put together? Did the defense request this extreme delay? The article states, “The commonwealth has yet to tender any discovery from any witness stating that the alleged victim died due to the use of Ativan,” according to the defense. Does this mean that the prosecution is not yet ready to proceed? If the defense attorney’s statement is accurate — and it was apparently made to the judge — then the prosecution has not given to the defense the required material for the defense to prepare.

I have to ask: what purpose is served by scheduling a trial 8½ months in the future? The defendant has already spent more than a month behind bars, and, if despite the bail reduction, she can’t make bail, would wind up spending 294 days, almost ten months, in jail for a crime of which she has been accused but not convicted? The prosecution wanted Miss Hunter’s bail not only not decreased, but increased, because the Commonwealth’s Attorney apparently wants to keep her locked up for those 294 days, to punish her for that almost ten months, before she even goes to trial, before the Commonwealth has to prove its case against her.

What if she is acquitted? The prosecution wants to punish her in advance, just in case they don’t win.

Miss Six did not include, in her article, whether either the prosecution or defense requested the June trial date, or whether this was simply a decision by the court.

One final point: while in previous Herald-Leader articles on this case, Miss Hunter is alleged to have injected James Morris with Lorazepam, while in this one, the drug mentioned is Ativan. While these are two brand names for the same drug, any reader who did not know that could be confused.

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Killadelphia: I told you so!

I told you so! I said yesterday evening, concerning the shooting at Roxborough High School, “Four shooters, huh? Were we not reliably informed by (The Philadelphia Inquirer) that there are no gangs in the city, just ‘cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,’ I would have said that, yeah, this was a gang hit, but apparently it was just a beef of some sort between cliques. I suppose that I’ll have to stop using the term ‘gang-bangers’ and replace it with a more politically correct ‘clique beefers.'” Now we learn from Steve Keeley of Fox29 News:

The Inquirer actually admitted that it was a deliberately targeted hit:

At least one teen shooting victim was targeted, officials say

by Erin McCarthy | Wednesday, September 28, 2022 | 3:48 PM EDT

Philadelphia police officials on Wednesday showed video footage that captured the moments when five shooters, all of whom appear to be juveniles, opened fire on a group of Roxborough High School football players after a Tuesday afternoon scrimmage.

Nicholas Elizalde, 14, of Havertown, was killed in the attack, and Philadelphia Police Capt. Jason Smith said he believes Elizalde was “a totally innocent victim.” Investigators believe one or more of the other victims were targeted, Smith added.

“There was possibly some altercation in the lunchroom” earlier Tuesday, Smith said, noting investigators had interviewed three of the five victims and were still looking into several possible motives.

“Do we believe it was targeted? Yes,” Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said. “Who was the target? We’re still working to determine that.”

The five shooters, one more than had previously been reported, waited near the football field for six minutes, Vanore and Smith said, until the five victims walked by the shooters’ light-colored Ford Explorer.

Then, five people exited the SUV and started firing. Four ran back to the car after the initial volley of gunfire, police said. A fifth shooter continued running down the street, shooting at the 17-year-old victim, who was not a Roxborough football player and whom Smith said he believes was targeted.

“That victim collapses on sidewalk. [The shooter] stands over top of him and continues firing,” Smith said. “The only thing that stopped this individual from firing was that apparently he had run out of bullets and the slide had locked.”

In all, police recovered more than 60 fired cartridges at the scene. They are looking for the five shooters and a sixth individual who drove the SUV.

What the Inky did not have was that the 17-year-old (apparently) intended victim was a previously identified carjacker and “is referenced several times for his criminal activity.” Did those “Law Enforcement sources” tell FOX 29 News but not the Inquirer, or was it the Inky’s usual censorship of the news?

The unidentified 17-year-ols was shot once in his right arm and thrice in his left leg. How, I have to ask, could the shooter have been “stand(ing) over top of (the victim) and continu(ing to) fire,” and still not kill his victim?

Of course, the Inquirer had a feature on how to fudge the truth to your own kids:

How to talk to kids about the Roxborough High School shooting

Tips for how to talk to kids about grief and violence after the Roxborough High School shooting.

by Sarah Gantz and Abraham Gutman | Wednesday, September 28, 2022 | 4:48 PM EDT

On Tuesday, five high school students were shot after a football scrimmage at Roxborough High School. One has died.

Whether you are talking to children directly affected by this latest school shooting, ongoing neighborhood violence, or the death of a loved one, guiding them through this emotional thicket can be tough. You may be asking yourself:

How much should you tell children?

How do you make them feel better?

You know, I’m not going to quote any of the psychobabble from the article; if you want to read it, click on the link. But you know how to talk to kids about the Roxborough shooting? Tell ’em that this is what happens to gang-bangers cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families, and if they want to avoid being gunned down, the best way to do that is to do the right things, not the wrong, and stay away from the wannabe thugs.

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Killadelphia: Not a “gang hit”, but just a “beef” between “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families”

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Ellie Rushing, Jessica Griffin, Ximena Conde, and Chris Palmer wrote, on September 19th:

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

(William Fritze, an assistant district attorney who heads the Gun Violence Task Force in the DA’s Office), though, said it’s time to call them what they are: “I think we are now at a point where we can comfortably say there are gangs.”

Beef between rival crews sometimes goes back years. But increasingly, he said, the feuds are fueled by — and chronicled on — social media, particularly Instagram. Members of one group often make posts or livestreams mocking and claiming the shootings of people in rival crews as a way to build street cred.

So, since the learned journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading of the Inquirer tell me there are no real gangs in the City of Brotherly Love, I guess that this wasn’t a gang hit, but simply a beef between a couple of “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families.”

A 14-year-old boy was killed and 4 other teens wounded in a shooting after a football scrimmage at Roxborough High School

Just after 4:40 p.m., players participating in a football scrimmage were walking off the field and heading to a school bus when gunfire erupted.

by Ellie Rushing, Kristen A. Graham, and Robert Moran | Tuesday, September 27, 2022 | 8:32 PM EDT

A 14-year-old boy was killed and four other teens wounded in a shooting after a football scrimmage outside Roxborough High School late Tuesday afternoon, police said, marking the 23rd shooting death of a child this year as Philadelphia continues to face a surge in gun violence.

Just after 4:40 p.m., players participating in a football scrimmage were walking off the field and heading to a school bus on Pechin Street when shooters opened fire from a car and unleashed a volley of bullets on the team, police said.

A 14-year-old boy who suffered a gunshot wound to the left side of his chest was rushed by police to Einstein Medical Center and was pronounced dead at 5:09 p.m.

The boy was a football player on the Roxborough team, but he attended Saul High School, a nearby magnet school that focuses on agriculture, Philadelphia School District spokesperson Christina Clark said.

Further down:

The three-way scrimmage between Roxborough, Northeast, and Boys Latin High Schools’ junior varsity football teams had just finished around 4:30 p.m. and players were grabbing their gear and walking towards the bus.

Suddenly, four shooters ambushed members of the Roxborough team and shot five of them, police said.

Four shooters, huh? Were we not reliably informed by the Inky that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” I would have said that, yeah, this was a gang hit, but apparently it was just a beef of some sort between cliques. I suppose that I’ll have to stop using the term “gang-bangers” and replace it with a more politically correct “clique beefers.”

As we have noted many times before, The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl. So, while a 14-year-old boy being killed would normally be seen as the death of an “innocent,” a planned “hit” on a group of junior varsity football players certainly sounds like there was something to have generated bad blood between at least one of the players and a “clique of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families.” The dead player might not have been involved in whatever dispute the “clique beefers” had, but the obvious assumption is that at least someone among the departing players might not have been quite the “innocent” the Inky would like to make him out to be.

When the Inky stops telling us what a good and noble fellow the dead boy was, we’ll know a lot more.
__________________________________________

Updated: Wednesday, September 28, 2022 |  8:59 AM EDT

Shooters remain unidentified, and their motive remains unclear

By Ellie Rushing, Kristen A. Graham, and Robert Moran | 7:20 AM EDT

It remains unclear what led to the shooting outside Roxborough High School, said Capt. John Walker, head of the Police Department’s nonfatal shooting unit, adding that there have been no other recent incidents involving players on these teams.

It was also unclear just how many shots were fired, but there were more than 70 evidence markers throughout the street, noting both shell casings and bullet fragments.

The photo in the Inquirer shows an investigator carrying an evidence marker numbered 74.

Let’s tell the truth here: the surviving victims almost certainly know which “clique of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families” shot them, and their wounds were primarily in their legs:

During Tuesday’s shooting, another 14-year-old boy was shot once in his left thigh, and a 15-year-old was shot in the leg. A 17-year-old was also shot in the right arm and three times in his left leg. All were rushed to Einstein and Temple Hospital, and were in stable condition Tuesday night, police said.

A fifth player suffered a graze wound, but did not require medical treatment, police said.

Translation: their wounds, though doubtlessly painful, are not serious enough that none of them would have been able to be questioned by the police. If the police do not know the identities of the shooters and at least the players’ version of the dispute which led to the attack, then the players simply aren’t talking. They’re following the street code, and expecting that street ‘justice’ will avenge their shootings.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Killadelphia and Killington

We have been noticing that the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love has been taking a slightly different path this year than in 2021’s record-setting bloodbath. At the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend of 2021, there had been 363 homicides in the city, where the number was 372 this year. The statistics slightly skew, because Labor Day was on September 6th in 2021, and September 5th this year.

In 2021, the homicide rate really took off after Labor Day, rising from 1.4578 per day, to 1.7155 per day for the rest of the year, taking the projected number of total murders from 532 to 562.

But this year, that surge hasn’t been seen, and the number of homicides has fallen behind 2021’s awful toll; as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, September 25th, Philly is six homicides behind last year’s same-day numbers. At 1.48134328358209 killings per day, Philly actually has a lower daily death rate than the 1.504032258064516 seen at the end of the Labor Day holiday. At the end of Labor Day, the killing numbers projected out to 548.97, while now they’re down to 540.69 now. That’s still a terrible number, but perhaps, just perhaps, the city can avoid setting a new record for murders this year. Sure, it’s almost certainly going to be above 500, second-place all time, but that’s better than another gold medal.

However, the gold medal is what Lexington, Kentucky has won:

Woody LaPierre, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Lexington ties 2021 homicide record after man dies in Sunday morning shooting

by Taylor Six | Sunday, September 25, 2022 | 9:18 AM EDT | Updated: 3:39 PM EDT

Lexington has tied its record for homicides, set in 2021, with the city’s 37th homicide of 2022 taking place Sunday morning on Oxford Circle.

According to Lexington Police, officers responded to the 1800 block of Oxford Circle where they located 25-year-old Adentokunbo Okunoye, who had been shot around 4 a.m.

When officers arrived, they located Okunoye suffering from a gunshot wound. According to police, he was declared dead at the scene by the Lexington Fire Department.

Police arrested 29-year-old Woody LaPierre and charged him with murder. He is currently being held at the Fayette County Detention Center.

There’s more at the original, but it’s just noting the statistics: with 37 homicides, Lexington has tied last year’s record. In 2021, the 37th murder occurred on December 30th, while the city had seen only 27 killings at this time last year.

At 37 murders in 268 days, one every 7.24 days, Kentucky’s second-largest city is on a path to 50.39 murders for the year. Just four days ago, the number was at least under fifty, at 49.585.

In a bit of good news, the Lexington Police Department has solved the killing of Dietrich Murray:

Man arrested in connection to August murder on Dakota Street, Lexington police say

by Taylor Six | Sunday, September 25, 2022 | 9:54 AM EDT | Updated: Monday, September 26, 2022 | 10:59 AM EDT

James Catlett, photo by Fayette County Detention Center on August 6, 2014, and is a public record.

The Lexington Police Department arrested a man in connection with a homicide that occurred in August on Dakota Street.

Forty-five-year-old James Catlett was arrested on Saturday and charged with murder for the August 31 shooting death of Dietrich Murray, 29, according to police.

Murray was found lying in a Lexington road last month with a gunshot wound and died at the hospital, according to Lexington police.

Lt. Joe Anderson of the Lexington Police Department said the night of the homicide, the police received a report of a shooting at approximately 7:45 a.m. Murray was found in the intersection of North Broadway and Loudon Avenue when officers arrived.

According to court documents, a single spent .380 caliber shell casing was found at the scene of the shooting. Catlett was identified as a suspect and it was determined the shell casing came from a handgun that was in Catlett’s possession during a traffic stop on Sept. 1, according to an affidavit.

It was unclear if Catlett was a suspect in the shooting at the time of the traffic stop.

An eyewitness confirmed Catlett as the shooter through a photo lineup, according to court documents. Police didn’t comment on additional details of the investigation when asked Monday.

There’s more at the original.

As usual, what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal did not publish the mugshots of either criminal suspect, despite the fact that that the Lexington television stations had.

With a guesstimated population of 337,000, Lexington had a homicide rate of 10.98 per 100,000 population in 2021. If the city hits the projected 50 this year, the rate would be 14.84 per 100,000 population. Killington isn’t quite in Killadelphia’s league, but perhaps it ought to quit trying.

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With 100 days left in the year, Lexington is just one homicide short of tying its all-time record.

In 2019, Lexington, Kentucky, set its all-time homicide record of 30, but that record didn’t last long. There were 34 homicides in 2020, and then 37 in 2021. Well, it l;ooks like the gang-bangers have taken breaking the record yet again as a personal challenge, as the city saw it’s 36th killing on THursday:

One person dead, police investigating after a shooting in Lexington

by Christopher Leach | Thursday, September 22, 2022 | 2:08 PM EDT | Updated: 4:43 PM EDT

One person has died after a shooting on Jennifer Road in Lexington, police say.

The shooting happened around noon Thursday. Police received a report at 12:01 p.m. of an individual who had been shot at an apartment complex in the 1700 block of Jennifer Road, according to Lt. Joe Anderson with the Lexington Police Department.

That individual was transported to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, according to Maj. Jessica Bowman with the Lexington Fire Department. The victim, a male, was pronounced dead at the hospital, according to police.

The Fayette County Coroner’s Office identified the victim as 51-year-old Raymond Brooks.

The suspect fled the scene before officers arrived, police said. Police didn’t release any additional information on a possible suspect. More information is expected to be released later.

There’s a little more information at the original.

Lexington’s 36th homicide of 2021 didn’t occur until December 17th, so the city is 86 days ahead of last year’s bloody pace. 36 homicides in 265 days works out to a projected 49.585 killings for the year, if the same pace is maintained, one killing every 7.361 days.

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Do ‘progressive’ prosecutors equal bloody streets? Correlation does not equal causation, but it sure looks interesting

We have previously noted that while Philadelphia’s homicide rate increased after Jim Kenney replaced Michael Nutter as Mayor, things really began to take off after Larry Krasner became District Attorney. Now my good friend Robert Stacy McCain has noted how homicides took off in Baltimore after another George Soros-sponsored wokester, Marilyn Mosby, became Charm City’s prosecutor:

Homicides in the city increased dramatically after Mosby became the state’s attorney for Baltimore, and the crime wave she unleashed has reverberated across Maryland and into neighboring states, for the simple reason that failure to prosecute criminals in the city means they are free to commit crimes in other jurisdictions. Criminals from Baltimore that Mosby turned loose are perpetrating felonies throughout Maryland, as well as in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

Mr Krasner has been trying to pass the responsibility for Philly’s surge in homicides on everything but himself, claiming that they’ve surged everywhere, but there’s a noticeable difference. In Baltimore, they surged in 2015, after Mrs Mosby took office in 2015, while in the City of Brotherly Love, there was an uptick, but not a huge one, certainly not the 63.03% increase seen when Mrs Mosby took office in Baltimore. Homicides actually dropped by a small amount, from 280 down to 277, in Mayor Jim Kenney’s first year, though they then pushed up to 315, a 13.72% jump, in 2017.

George Soros sent $1.45 million to Mr Krasner for his 2017 campaign, which he won, and then murders jumped to 353 his first year in office, then 356, then 499, and then to last year’s record shattering 562.

Baltimore’s population in 2015 was a guesstimated 622,851, which put Charm City’s homicide rate at a whopping 55.23 per 100,000 population. The city’s population has continued to shrink, and was down to 576,498 in 2021, which means that its 337 homicides, seven fewer than in 2015, results in an even higher 58.46 per 100,000 homicide rate. Philly’s gang-bangers have a lot of catching up to do to match Baltimore’s bloody streets!

Correlation does not equal causation, but it certainly is interesting how two Interstate 95 corridor cities both saw huge spikes in homicides after Soros-sponsorship put ‘progressive’ prosecutors in office.

 

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Killadelphia: A reason for hope?

We have previously noted, several times, that, at the end of the Labor Day weekend in 2021, the homicide rate in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia had dropped to ‘just’ 1.4578 murders a day, which would yield 532 murders for the entire year, if that average was maintained.

It wasn’t maintained, as the drug dealers and gang-bangers somehow took that as a personal challenge, and in the period after Labor Day, the City of Brotherly Love saw a murder rate of 1.7155 per day.

As of September 5th, the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend this year, 373 people had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards, yielding a homicide rate of 1.5040 killings per day, or a projected 549 murders for 2022; the mid-summer ‘lull’ that had happened in 2021 didn’t occur this year.

But there may be some hope that the post-Labor Day surge that happened in 2021 might not happen, or not be as bad, in 2022. While this wouldn’t seem to be a cause for celebration in more civilized places, there has been only one recorded homicide in Philadelphia since Wednesday, September 14th, and the homicide rate has dropped below 1.50, down to 1.4809 per day, which projects out to 540.53 murders for the entire year.

That’s hardly a great number, but at least it’s better than last year’s record-smashing 562.

At the end of the Labor Day holiday this year, there had been 3.324% more homicides than the previous year; as of 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, September 19th, the increase is down to 1.042%, as the killing rate last year was higher.

Yes, I am a numbers geek to some extent, and yes, it has been only two weeks since the end of the Labor Day holiday, so it’s really too soon to note a real trend here, but at least it’s a reason for hope.