2 teens arrested in quadruple shooting that killed 3 teens in Philly

Two teenagers have been arrested in connection with a quadruple shooting that left three teens dead and one hospitalized Friday afternoon in Philadelphia’s Crescentville section, police said.

Police identified the dead Saturday as Malik Ballard, 17, of the city’s Frankford section; Khalif Frezghi, 18, of East Mount Airy; and Salaah Fleming, 14, of North Philadelphia.

The shooting occurred about 3:30 p.m. Friday on the 5900 block of Palmetto Street, where, police said, Ballard was found shot on the sidewalk, Frezghi on a front porch, and Fleming just inside the front doorway of a home. All were pronounced dead at the scene by medics.

A fourth victim, a 16-year-old male who has not been identified, arrived at Jefferson Frankford Hospital with a gunshot wound to the stomach, police said.

Fleming was an eighth grader at Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School of Philadelphia Inc., said Veronica J. Joyner, the school’s founder and chief administrative officer for nearly 25 years. She said the hospitalized teen, whose name she would not disclose, is an 11th grader at the school, located on Broad Street across from the School District of Philadelphia’s headquarters.

“Both of the young men are very respectable and they’re good students,” Joyner said in an interview Saturday afternoon. “The school and the school family is very saddened that this continues to happen to young people.”

Before Friday’s shooting, 57 children under 18 had been shot in Philadelphia so far this year, eight fatally.

Fleming had just started at the grade 1-12 school in September and was praised by his teachers as being “very mannerable, very quiet and hardworking,” Joyner said, calling his death “just a travesty.”

The injured 11th grader, Joyner said, has “a smile that would light up the room.”

She said she was not aware of any conflicts within the school that might have carried over to Palmetto Street and the shooting there Friday afternoon. She said Fleming had not been in school Friday.

Ballistic evidence was recovered from Palmetto Street and a gun was found inside the residence, police said.

A short time after the shootings, police said Friday night, they found a black Ford Edge believed to have been involved in the shootings. It had crashed on the 500 block of East Wyoming Street. Police took two juveniles into custody and said they believed they had dropped off the injured 16-year-old at the hospital.

Police identified them only as 15- and 16-year-old males and said they have been charged with violation of the Uniform Firearms Act and related offenses.

At Mathematics, Civics and Sciences, a school of 1,000 students, Fleming’s classmates and those of the 11th grader reported in critical condition “are devastated. I’m getting calls from parents,” Joyner said.

Grief counselors will be available to any students on Monday and eighth graders will be given a break from taking the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams that are ongoing “to give them some time to grieve,” Joyner said.

She said the school this year has had to hire four additional grief counselors in addition to the two it had on staff because of the preponderance of gun violence and the impact it is having on students.

“We have about two typed pages of students that have lost either mother, father, brothers, sisters” or other relatives in shootings, said Joyner, who has a social work background and has been working with children for 53 years. “The schools now, they have to deal with a lot of things they didn’t deal with when I went to school.”