We have said, umpteen times, that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t really care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an innocent, a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl.

Two young athletes were fatally shot this week, leaving West Philadelphia school communities shattered: ‘This can’t be normal’

“This can’t be normal, this can’t be accepted,” a Boys’ Latin football coach said he told his players. “You have a victim, but you also have a family behind them that are left to pick up the pieces.”

By Anna Orso | Friday, July 23, 2021

It had been just a few weeks since K.J. Johnson got his driver’s license. He picked up friends, including his childhood pal Tommie Frazier, and headed to play basketball on Wednesday, a sunny afternoon in West Philly.

The ride ended in tragedy. Johnson, 16, and Frazier, 18, were fatally shot just after noon while seated in a car on the 200 block of North 56^th Street in West Philadelphia, after unidentified gunmen fired into the vehicle. Another 16-year-old was wounded by the bullets fired in broad daylight near a day care and a bus stop.

As of Friday, no one had been arrested and homicide investigators were still searching for video and witnesses. Police said they found 17 shell casings at the scene.

There’s plenty more at the original, but it all boils down to the same thing we’ve written about before: the victims were good high school athletes, the victims were somebodies.

A previous story noted that:

The shooting happened at 12:10 p.m. on the 200 block of North 56th Street, when unidentified gunmen opened fire on the teens as they sat in a car, said Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Naish.

Two males, ages 16 and 18 — whom police did not identify — were pronounced dead at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center after each was struck several times. The other teen, a 16-year-old boy, was taken to Lankenau Medical Center in stable condition, police said.

Seated in a car, each struck several times, and the police recovered 17 shell casings at the scene. This wasn’t random; these victims were deliberately targeted.

As @Dana_TFSJ has been telling me for MONTHS. https://t.co/eQdJT3DQN6

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) July 23, 2021

Was Mr McCain telling me that I’ve been too much of a broken record on Philadelphia murders? 🙂

Next came another story:

He ‘didn’t deserve to die this way,’ says family of the 22-year-old killed outside Pat’s Steaks

Police have charged a Reading man with murder in connection with the killing of David Padro Jr., a 22-year-old from Camden.

by Anna Orso and Mensah M. Dean | Updated: July 23, 2021

David Padro Sr. expected to spend this weekend like he did the last one: surrounded by family and hanging out by his pool in South Jersey with his 22-year-old son.

Instead, he’s planning his son’s funeral.

David Padro Jr., 22, was fatally shot early Thursday morning in South Philadelphia outside Pat’s King of Steaks, the famed cheesesteak joint where he had stopped for a bite. His father said Padro, of Camden, was in Philadelphia with his girlfriend to go to a nightclub when they stopped to eat and an argument broke out among patrons.

Then, police say, Paul C. Burkert, a 36-year-old from Reading, pulled a gun. Padro was shot in the shoulder and abdomen and transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 1 a.m. Police said Burkert fled the scene and then turned himself in to National Park Police at Independence Mall.

Burkert faces murder and weapons charges. Court records show he pleaded guilty to a felony drug charge in Berks County in 2019 and was prohibited from possessing a firearm. No attorney for him was listed in court records Friday.

Gee, a convicted druggie, probably a drug dealer, carrying a handgun while out to buy a cheesesteak. He may have been from Reading, but that was real Philadelphia of him!

The Inquirer reported that, despite previous rumors that it was an altercation between Eagles and Giants fans, it was an altercation over a parking space. A photo accompanying the story shows just how crowded Philly’s narrow streets are in that area.

But both cases show what the Inquirer does. They pick some unusual aspect, high school basketball players, or out-or-towners who didn’t know each other, while the typical murders, one bad guy shooting another bad guy, get ignored, and they get mostly ignored because the city doesn’t want to face the real problem: it’s not guns, but a culture which says it’s perfectly reasonable to pull out your Glock and blast someone else.