Killadelphia: The city’s white, liberal elite were appalled at Josh Kruger’s murder, but didn’t even notice the killings of four ‘nobodies.’ I am not surprised in the least.

We have noted, really too many times to note all of them, that The Philadelphia Inquirer is not really concerned about individual homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl is the victim. On Monday morning, it was reported that Josh Kruger, a freelance journalist of at least some note in Philly was murdered, which we noted here, and the left in Philly — Rue Landau, Inquirer reporter Ellie Rushing, Jordan Winkler, Mayor Jim Kenney, the Liberty City Dems, state Senator Nikil Saval, The New York Times, WPVI-TV, Inquirer editorial writer Daniel Pearson, CNN, Taj Magruder, Maggie Hart, and an untold number of other people are all mourning his death.

Yet what about the three people murdered early this morning, along with a fourth person critically wounded, in the Crascentville section of the city, and the ‘person of interest’ suspected in the killings? They are, as far as the media have told us thus far, not ‘somebodies,’ and there are few tweets about them, few messages I have seen, and, as far as I can tell, other than friends and family, nobody f(ornicating) cares. Mayor Kenney has said nothing about those four people, whom I assume to be black from this photo in the Inky. Mr Kruger was white.

And you know what? I am not surprised in the least!

Killadelphia: Requiescat in pace, Josh Kruger It can get personal when you know the guy who was murdered

I did not follow Josh Kruger on Twitter, though I frequently saw his tweets — sorry, Elon Musk, but I can’t bring myself to call it “X” — because he was followed by twelve other people I do follow. Mr Kruger is a Philly liberal, who occasionally made a point from the left that isn’t bat guano insane, and occasionally made decent arguments.  I have interacted with him on Twitter previously, though not frequently, and wrote about his complaint that Wawa was pulling out of Center City.

But, even if I disagreed with him politically, he’s still someone I ‘knew,’ even if only over the internet, so it is disturbing to read that he was murdered: 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

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

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: The area “was littered with shell casings.”

If bullets fly in Kensington, is it really news?

700 block of East Madison Street. Photo via Google Maps, August 2019. Click to enlarge.

Kensington and Independence Mall-area shootings leave two dead, three wounded

The Kensington shootings occurred in an area long burdened by gun violence.

by Anthony R Wood | Saturday, August 26, 2023 | 11:07 PM EDT

A 39-year-old man was shot to death and two others were critically wounded late Saturday afternoon in a triple shooting in Kensington, police said.Several hours later, police said, a double shooting occurred in the Independence Mall area, leaving one man dead and another wounded.

The first shooting occurred just before 5 p.m. in the 700 block of East Madison Street, not far from the intersection of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, in an area that has been more burdened by gun violence than any other in the city.

The 700 block of East Madison is a racially-integrated, semi-dilapidated rowhouse street, with several homes in which the owners have literally put themselves in jail, adding security bars to keep people off of their front porches. Extremely narrow, cars are shown parked entirely on the sidewalk on the left-hand side of the street, as the one-way traffic flows, and partially on the sidewalk on the right-hand side.

A check of the real estate site Zillow shows that 711 East Madison is for sale, for a list price of $59,900, a 750 ft² home built in 1920, and being sold “as is.” No photos of the inside are available. Zillow’s map shows virtually every home in the neighborhood that is listed for sale is listed for under six digits. Continue reading

Killadelphia: We knew all along whom the Usual Suspects would blame!

500 block of North Creighton Street, via Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

We have previously noted the shooting in the 500 block of North Creighton Street in West Philadelphia. A semi-dilapidated neighborhood with a few rowhouses boarded up, it’s wholly unsurprising that City Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier would blame it not on bad guys or street gangs, but “massive blight and disinvestment.”

Police identified the 19-year-old man who was fatally shot at a West Philly block party

Kevin July, 19, was fatally shot early Saturday on the 500 block of North Creighton Street, police said. Another eight people were wounded in the incident at a late-night outdoor party.

by Chris Palmer and Rodrigo Torrejón | Monday, August 21, 2023

Philadelphia Police on Monday identified the man who was fatally shot at what officials are now calling an unpermitted block party over the weekend as 19-year-old Kevin July, saying he was one of nine people shot in the violent episode in West Philadelphia’s Mill Creek section. The eight other victims survived, police said.

Still, authorities have released few other new details about the crime as they continue to investigate, saying they were not yet sure of a motive, nor were they even certain how many people opened fire during the incident.

July’s relatives declined to comment when contacted by phone Monday.

The shooting happened on the 500 block of North Creighton Street around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, police said, when shooters fired at least 60 shots into a crowd of dozens of people who had gathered for a party or barbecue. The celebration took place at end of the rowhouse-lined street that dead ends in between Wyalusing and Westminster Avenues.

The article noted that the block party had not applied for or received a permit for such, and that permitted block parties must end at 8:30 PM. Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore told the media that shell casings from at least three different types of ammunition had been recovered, and that means only one thing: gangs!

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents the area, said in an interview that she’d spoken to the captain of the 16th Police District and been told that the event was a private gathering that had attracted guests from elsewhere, and that some people who live on the block “didn’t even know people who engaged in the dispute.” . . . .

She also said Mill Creek, the neighborhood in which the shooting occurred, is burdened by “massive blight and disinvestment,” including city-owned properties that have grown dilapidated. And she said the city should focus on investing in housing, clearing vacant lots, and improving the nearby recreation center as ways to improve conditions that can lead to violence.

“The chronic disinvestment experienced in neighborhoods like West Mill Creek lends to the thought that nobody cares here, anything goes here,” she said.

Would you invest in an area like that? If I were going to invest my money in something, it would be something which showed an at least plausible return on investment. West Mill Creek is not a place in which that plausible return on investment exists.

I grew up poor, too, reared by a divorced mother, alone, with two younger sisters, but somehow, some way, I did get involved with street gangs, and I never shot anyone. Poverty is no excuse!

Californie ain’t the place you wanna be! "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." -- Albert Einstein

After Jed Clampett struck oil when he missed a shot at some game he wanted for the dinner table, and became an instant millionaire, his kinfolk said that he needed to get away from the hillbilly life, and that “Californie is the place you wanna be, so they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly.

Hills, that is. Swimming pools, movie stars.

Well, these days, perhaps Californie ain’t the place you wanna be. Ballot Proposition 47, which passed 4,238,156 (59.61%) to 2,871,943 (40.39%) on November 4, 2014, reduced several (purportedly) non-violent offenses from felonies to misdemeanors:

  • Shoplifting, where the value of property stolen does not exceed $950
  • Grand theft, where the value of the stolen property does not exceed $950
  • Receiving stolen property, where the value of the property does not exceed $950
  • Forgery, where the value of forged check, bond or bill does not exceed $950
  • Fraud, where the value of the fraudulent check, draft or order does not exceed $950
  • Writing a bad check, where the value of the check does not exceed $950
  • Personal use of most illegal drugs (Below a certain threshold of weight)

Robert Stacy McCain has been calling California a kleptocracy for some time now, but, of course, he’s just another evil Right Wing Extremist, so his views don’t matter.

It has been said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, something certainly not entirely true, as I have not been mugged; whether Mr McCain has been, I do not know. But what happens when reporters for the liberal Cable News Network get robbed?

CNN reporter burglarized a third time while covering rampant crime in the Bay Area

Kyung Lah warns tourists visiting San Francisco and Oakland, ‘do not leave a single thing in your car’

By Joseph A. Wulfsohn, Fox News | Wednesday, August 2, 2023 | 9:00 PM EDT

A CNN crew has been burglarized a third time while covering the rampant crime in the Bay Area of California.

CNN correspondent Kyung Lah took to Twitter on Wednesday and shared video of her crew’s car with a completely-shattered window.

“I’m #Oakland, shooting a story about crime. Got broken into again— but this time our car was completely empty. We were across the street— this happened in seconds,” Lah wrote. “Even tho the car is empty, the thieves break in and lower the seat so they can steal anything in the trunk. Our trunk was empty. If you come to San Francisco or Oakland, do not leave a single thing in your car. Ours was thankfully empty.”

The CNN reporter continued:

If you’re here keeping track, this is the 3rd time my CNN rented car has been broken into in the Bay Area in the last year. But I’ve finally learned to not leave even a candy bar in the car anymore (still doesn’t stop the car break in but at least we don’t lose anything)

“(A)t least we don’t lose anything,” she wrote, but, then again, it wasn’t really her car, was it?

At the rental car return lot, the employee tells us of the 250 cars returned yesterday, 27 had been broken into, just more than 10% of cars returned

Just how long will the rental car agency be able to stay in business if 10.8% of the vehicles it rents out come back damaged like that? The agency’s insurance rates will have to increase, along with the repair costs within the deductible, and that means the price to rent a car will get jacked up. At what point do businessmen simply say, “This [insert slang term for feces here] just isn’t worth it”?

Fox News had a story on Miss Lah’s previous encounter with crime.

We previously wrote, At some point, you’d think that even the most liberal of the liberals would realize that without some semblance of law and order, you no longer have civilization! Yes, after fifteen good years in the Keystone State before I retired, I tend to concentrate on crime, mostly violent crime, in Philadelphia.

Carjackers beat a man to death in Northern Liberties, police say

The incident occurred late Thursday night, according to police, when two men pulled a 60-year-old from his vehicle and beat him before fleeing the scene in his car.

by Beatrice Forman | Friday, August 18, 2023

A pair of carjackers assaulted a man before fleeing the scene and taking his vehicle, leaving him for dead in Northern Liberties Thursday night, Philadelphia police say.

The incident occurred just before 10 p.m. on Third and Cambridge Streets, when two masked men pulled up on what a witness told police was a dirt bike. Then, the pair pulled a 60-year-old man from the driver’s seat of a parked 2023 Toyota Highlander, according to the witness account that police relayed to reporters.

That would be a “small, frail, thin, lightweight” 60-year-old Asian man, according to the Philadelphia Police. They sure proved how manly they are!

An altercation ensued before one of the masked men took off in the Highlander and the other took off in the on the dirt bike, according to police.

When officers arrived on the scene, they found the 60-year-old laying in the street as witnesses attempted to render aid.

“He was bleeding from the head. He was semi-conscious,” Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters. “He was unable to stand up.”

The victim was transported to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, but was pronounced dead less than an hour later.

Officers tracked the location of the Highlander to Camden, where it was recovered unoccupied by Camden police. The dirt bike was last seen traveling north on Third toward Girard Avenue Thursday night.

So, whatever the thugs had planned — and remember: they didn’t know that the victim they beat had died — they simply dumped the car they stole on the far side of the Ben Franklin Bridge, and at least one of them was back in Philly, and while Northern Liberties isn’t that bad an area, heading north on Third takes you to some not so great parts of town. But the innocent man they beat lost his life over what turned out to be a joyride for the thugs, and the odds are pretty good that the carjackers, the killers, were teenagers, and juveniles.

Beatrice Forman, the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, cannot always choose the stories she is assigned; news comes in, and has to be written up. She is, after all, a “general assignments reporter.” But when I read her bio at the bottom of her article, where it said that she “enjoys covering Philly-specific tomfoolery,” I had to wonder how she felt about this specific bit of tomfoolery, because, the way it ended, at least on the part of the killers, was little more than tomfoolery as far as they were concerned.

We have previously noted Oakland/Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, yet another one of the ‘progressive’ civil rights defense lawyers funded by George Soros, like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, who are softer-than-Charmin on crime. These idiots good people believe that they are somehow doing something good and noble by keeping oh-so-misunderstood young men out of jail, but what they have created, and what the Pyrite State’s Proposition 47 has enabled, a situation in which crime has few consequences, a situation in which crime has been enabled, and the ‘tomfoolery’ of a joyride into Camden has left an innocent man stone-cold graveyard dead.

Civilization requires civility, and civilization requires law and order, to keep the people living in it safe. Perhaps CNN correspondent Kyung Lah didn’t really feel the full effects of the car break-ins while she was reporting on crime in the Bay Area, because, after all, it wasn’t her car. But other people are feeling it, the rental car agency which has to repair the vehicle her producer and she rented, and the extra costs which that imposes on the agency, and eventually, its next customers. The people of Ward 8 in the District of Columbia are feeling the effects of crime, as the only grocery supermarket there is at least looking at closing its doors due to rampant shoplifting, and the store’s employees might feel the effects of crime as they could lose their jobs if the store closes. Michael Salerno’s family are feeling the effects, as he was murdered during a carjacking attempt, allegedly by a 15-year-old. “The latest serial carjacker had all of his cases dismissed in juvenile court and slaughtered a 19yo while on ankle monitor GPS.

I would like to believe that Miss Price and Mr Krasner and the rest of the ‘progressive’ prosecutors are genuinely good people, who actually believe that what they are doing will reduce crime and create a better society, rather than just evil, because good people can eventually learn from their mistakes, from the consequences of their actions and policies. I would like to believe that ‘progressives’ in general are seeing the consequences of the policies they support, and at least considering whether conservatives have been right all along, and that crime needs to be punished, and punished harshly. I would like to believe that good people could see that excusing lesser crimes, crimes which could put the malefactors in jail for five years, does the bad guys no favors, when, instead of being able to look forward to being released in a few years, they have been enabled to commit crimes which could get them locked up for the rest of their miserable lives.

Sadly, if that is going to happen, it hasn’t happened yet, as the good, white liberals who live in Society Hill and University City voted for the Larry Krasner-supporting Helen Gym Flaherty, because crime hasn’t come to their doorsteps yet. Perhaps, just perhaps, Miss Lah and her staff have learned the hard lesson the easy way, and might at least consider voting for conservatives, rather than the same old, same old who have enabled America’s large cities to turn into crime-ridden [insert slang term for feces here]holes. California is run almost completely by liberal Democrats, and Philly hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Harry Truman was President.

Albert Einstein, usually considered a fairly smart fellow, once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” I keep hoping that our ‘progressives,’ who consider themselves to be very smart people indeed, eventually see that, despite their very good and noble intentions, that what they have been doing, how they have cast their votes, has led to only bad results.

Killadelphia: Another story I didn’t find in The Philadelphia Inquirer How can a newspaper be called a newspaper when it doesn't report the news?

Yes, I’m paying good money to subscribe to The Philadelphia Inquirer, $5.49 per week, or $285.48 a year, so you’d think that that august journal, our nation’s third-oldest surviving daily newspaper, the winner of 20 Pulitzer Prizes, would do something really, really radical like report the news!

Well, I didn’t find this story in the Inquirer, but due to a tweet from Fox 29 News

Man charged in deadly ambush shooting of mother near crowded Philadelphia park, police say

Published July 27, 2023 11:00AM |Updated 12:04PM | Crime & Public Safety | FOX 29 Philadelphia

Alexander Grady, photo via Fox 29 News.

PHILADELPHIA – Homicide detectives have made an arrest in the deadly shooting of a local mother gunned down in a parked car in Philadelphia earlier this week, police say.

Note the date of the Fox 29 News article: it was initially reported at 11:00 AM on Thursday. That means that the Inquirer has had plenty of time to write its own story. But, as of 9:29 AM EDT on Friday, July 28th, there is absolutely nothing on this on either the Inky’s website main page or specific crime page.

Tina Arroyo, 32, was gunned down on Monday evening while sitting in the driver’s seat of a Honda Civic parked on the 500 block of East Louden Street, according to police.

“She pulled up on this scene and within moments another vehicle pulls up and shoots her,” Sgt. Eric Gripp said. “How quickly it happened and the callousness of all of it is deeply troubling.”

The shooting took place across the street from a crowded park, officials say.

On Thursday, police announced the arrest of 26-year-old Alexander Grady.

Grady has been charged with murder, criminal conspiracy, VUFA and related charges.

How can the newspaper be called a newspaper when it doesn’t report the news?