Police fatally shot an armed man during a foot chase in North Philly, PPD says

Police fatally shot an armed 32-year-old man during a foot pursuit and physical altercation Thursday afternoon in North Philadelphia, a department spokesperson said.

Policed on Friday identified the man as Curtis Smith.

Smith fired a gun during a struggle with an officer, according to Philadelphia police spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp. One or two officers then shot Smith multiple times, police said, and he was later pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital.

Both officers were wearing body cameras, which were turned on during the shooting, said Gripp, who gave this account:

Just after 2:20 p.m., two officers responded to a call to investigate a possible stolen automobile parked in a field on the 2300 block of Fawn Street.

Several people were seen near the vehicle, and two ran off when they saw the officers, while the third — Smith — ran from the area separately.

One of the officers chased Smith down the 2200 block of North Camac Street through an abandoned lot before he ran into an alley behind a property on Dauphin Street.

According to Gripp, Smith then pulled out a handgun and aimed it at the pursuing officer .

In response, the officer fired at least at once, though it was unclear whether that gunfire struck Smith.

When the second pursuing officer arrived, he saw the first officer in a “physical altercation” with Smith, who was still holding the handgun.

Smith fired at least once during the struggle, and that led the second officer to fire his weapon “several times” toward the man, and that “stopped the struggle.”

”We do not know which of the officers struck this male,” Gripp said. “We don’t know if it was one of the officers, the other, or both of them.”

He said each officer fired multiple rounds, though the number would not be known until an Internal Affairs investigation was complete.

Police later said Smith was shot seven times and that a handgun was recovered from the scene.

The officers, who were not injured, flagged down a responding police vehicle, which transported Smith to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 3:06 p.m., Gripp said.

The officers, who were not identified, have been placed on administrative duty pending the outcome of an internal investigation, he said. The department’s officer-involved shooting unit was on scene Thursday.

”There are a lot of cameras around, there’s gonna be a lot of witnesses, and our detectives have a lot of work ahead of them,” Gripp said.

Temple University, which is located just south of the shooting scene, issued an alert about the police activity on Camac Street.

Neighbors, meanwhile, were distressed to find that their block had become a crime scene.

A woman, who asked not to be identified for privacy reasons, told reporters she was a longtime friend of the man’s grandmother, and knew him from the neighborhood. She said she was skeptical of the police narrative.

”Imagine losing your loved one in the street,” the woman said.

She said the man was a father of a young child.

”Where’s the heart at? This is a community,” she said. “We care about each other. We’re working people.”