Police make new arrests, name suspects in the shooting deaths of several teens and a grandfather
Police made two arrests in recent homicides and issued an arrest warrant in a third.
Philadelphia police on Wednesday announced developments in a handful of high-profile homicides, including the slayings of three teens and the death of a 69-year-old man gunned down at a Germantown bank ATM last month.
Zyaire Ransom, 18, was arrested earlier this week for his role in the April 9 shooting of Steve Green III, 18, earlier this month, police said.
Police say six young men — including Ransom and Gary Taylor, 17, who turned himself in with his parents two days after the killing — chased Green and shot him multiple times.
Security cameras showed Ransom, Taylor, and four others leaving Taylor’s house on the 6000 block of Hazelhurst Street around 7 p.m. in a white Audi SUV, authorities said. Minutes later, other cameras showed the six approaching Green from behind, then moving out of view. When the camera showed the suspects again, they were running away, and the white Audi was recorded driving away from the scene at a high speed, according to charging documents in the case.
Minutes later, Ransom, Taylor, and other identified males are seen returning to Taylor’s home, the documents said. The Audi belonged to Taylor’s mother, an educator with the School District of Philadelphia, sources said.
Green’s family welcomed the arrest, but said they still struggling to understand why he was targeted.
“I just want to know why? For what reason? To take somebody’s life by shooting him 13 times, and making sure to shoot him in the face ― that’s pure meanness,” said Vernita Larue, Green’s grandmother.
“Whoever shot him, I would like to see this young person go to jail and stay there for the rest of his life, because we can’t see Stevie anymore. This kid took somebody’s life,” said Larue
A funeral for Green, a junior at KIPP DuBois Collegiate Academy in Parkside and a member of the basketball and football teams, will be held Saturday at Sharon Baptist Church on Conshohocken Avenue.
Police also announced the arrest of a second person in the killing of K.J. Johnson, 16, and Tommie Frazier, 18, two friends and high schoolers gunned down in a car on their way to basketball practice in West Philadelphia last summer.
The brazen daylight shootings rattled a community already on edge from mounting unsolved slayings.
Raheis Sherman, 20, was arrested earlier this month and charged with murder and conspiracy for his role in their deaths, police said Wednesday. He had been jailed since January on unrelated gun charges, police said.
Arshad Curry, 20, was arrested in December for his alleged role in the teens’ deaths. Detectives tied Curry to the shootings after interviewing a witness who said he was an associate of a man with the nickname “Most Wanted” — who police believe is Curry. The witness said Curry told him he shot the victims, but they were not his intended target, police said.
According to court papers, investigators believe Curry and Sherman, driving a blue minivan owned by Sherman’s mother, followed the teens from school. When the victims’ car was stopped at a red light, police said, Curry jumped out and fired at the driver’s side at least 17 times, fatally striking Johnson and Frazier, and injuring another 16-year-old.
Sherman, who investigators believe goes by the nickname “Five,” drove the getaway car, police said.
“It’s a tragic situation any way you look at it. There are no winners in this case,” said Sherman’s lawyer, Douglas Dolfman. “But we will vehemently defend the charges at every level, and hopefully we will be successful.”
Sherman and Curry are being held without bail at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility.
Also on Wednesday, police named a suspect in the March 4 slaying of James Watson, 69, who was shot after withdrawing $400 from an ATM on Germantown Avenue.
Kyree Dennis, 23, is wanted for murder in that case, police said.
When apprehended, Dennis will be the second person arrested in the case. The day after Watson was killed, police arrested Corey X. Thompson, 23, of Chichester Township, Delaware County. He is charged with murder, firearms crimes, and related offenses.
Watson had stopped at the bank to make a withdrawal of $400 for his granddaughter, who couldn’t run the errand because of a broken foot, according to Tymire Alston-Haywood, 15, his great-grandson.
The morning after Watson’s slaying, Philadelphia Homicide Capt. Jason Smith told The Inquirer that the killers fled empty-handed, as the money he had withdrawn from the ATM was found in his pocket.