Police chased after a man who drove from Philadelphia into New Jersey
Police said neither the car nor driver are believed to be linked to the weekend shooting of nine people in Kensington, despite what officials initially told reporters.
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Police arrested a man who led them on a car chase from Philadelphia into New Jersey, before ditching the car and fleeing on foot Wednesday night.
Just after 9:30 p.m., Philadelphia police spotted a dark-colored Honda Accord with blue-tinted after-market headlights, NBC10 reported. After police tried to stop the car, the driver took off, driving through Philadelphia and onto I-95 before crossing the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge into New Jersey.
The pursuit continued down Route 73 into Evesham, where the driver pulled into a funeral home parking lot and took off on foot.
Police initially told reporters that the car was being sought in connection with Saturday’s shooting of nine people in Kensington, along with an October shooting in the neighborhood, but later said that neither car nor the driver were connected to the shootings.
Evesham Township police arrested the man, who was not identified, without incident in the lot, Evesham Township Police Chief Walt Miller wrote on Facebook. Police searched for a second suspect, but were unable to find anyone or confirm that there had been a second person in the car, Miller wrote.
Police initially said they believed that the car was connected to the Kensington shootings and told reporters the man taken into custody was being questioned for both.
Police on Thursday morning said the man was not considered a person of interest in either shooting.
On Saturday night, shooters hopped out of a car and fired into a crowd on busy Kensington and Allegheny Avenues. The shooters fired at least 40 shots and five of the victims were critically wounded; their conditions were later upgraded to stable.
After reviewing surveillance footage, Philadelphia police were able to link a dark-colored Honda to Saturday’s shooting, along with a shooting around the corner on the 3100 block of Kensington in October. That shooting left a 27-year-old man critically injured.
The shooting Saturday caused a wave of outcry from Kensington community representatives, many of whom feel the neighborhood has been left to deal with systemic problems, including one of the country’s largest open-air drug markets and the pervasive violence that often accompanies it.
An Inquirer analysis found that within a five-minute walk of the Kensington and Allegheny intersection more than 300 people have been shot since 2015.