Philadelphia sanitation worker shot and killed while on the job in Mayfair

Police are searching for a suspect in a shooting that left a Philadelphia sanitation worker dead on Friday morning.

The shooting occurred around 10:35 a.m. on the 3300 block of Rowland Street near Lincoln High School in the city’s Mayfair section. Ikeem Johnson, a 35-year-old sanitation worker who had been a city employee for five years, was pronounced dead at the scene, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said.

At the time of the shooting, a sanitation truck carrying Johnson was traveling south on Rowland Street when the suspect, a man dressed in a blue Dickies-like outfit, approached the vehicle, causing it to stop, Outlaw said. The suspect then approached the passenger side of the truck, and the victim exited.

Shots were fired “almost immediately,” and the suspect then fled the scene on foot, Outlaw said. Police do not believe the shooting was random.

“If people don’t have access to firearms, any beef they may have had or whatever the situation is, would have been handled in a different way,” Mayor Jim Kenney said. “But this is the world we’re living in now, where these kinds of situations wind up in some tragic death.”

This incident marks the second shooting death of a city employee in the last several months. Tiffany Fletcher, a West Philadelphia recreational center employee, was fatally struck by a stray bullet while working at the Mill Creek Recreation Center in September. A 14-year-old boy was charged in her killing.

“It is heartbreaking that a dedicated public servant is now a victim of yet another senseless act of violence,” Streets Commissioner Carlton Williams said in a statement.

Tumar Alexander, the city’s managing director, added that the city will work with the police department to address situations in which city employees don’t feel sale.

“But this is just senseless,” Alexander said. “And at some point, it just has to stop.”