Cops: Man killed 2 strangers at random

Even in a city almost numbed by a rising murder rate, this was an especially heinous killing rampage.

Police yesterday arrested a man and charged him with randomly gunning down two strangers in separate shootings that took place several miles and several minutes apart in the predawn hours yesterday.

The bloodshed started when Francisco Rodriguez got out of his car around 2 a.m. to check on damage from a fender-bender at Broad Street and Lindley Avenue in the Logan section.

Police said a man they identified as Desmond Moore pulled up in his white Chrysler Sebring beside Rodriguez and opened fire, pumping three slugs into his chest.

Rodriguez, 52, was pronounced dead at Albert Einstein Medical Center.

He wasn't Moore's only victim, police say.

A few minutes later, Eric Christmas, 37, was robbed at gunpoint and killed at Baynton Street and Church Lane, less than three miles away. He was also targeted randomly by Moore, Chief Inspector Joe Fox said at yesterday's news conference outside Police Headquarters .

Rodriquez and Christmas were Philadelphia's 170th and 171st Philadelphia homicide victims - up 13 from this time last year.

A break in the case came two hours later as officers spotted Moore's vehicle and pulled it over in the 1500 block of 12th Street, where they recovered the murder weapon on the floor, police said.

The twin killings came in the wake of Monday's fatal shooting of Hasain Ameer Harrison at the RiteAid at Broad and Wyoming and a revenge shooting a couple of blocks away in Nicetown.

Monday night's incidents, according to Fox, apparently have no connection to yesterday morning's shootings.

Moore, who authorities said has an extensive criminal record, and another individual, whom authorities have not identified, were driving around the city "preying on victims," Fox said.

"Both incidents were gunpoint robberies of innocent people that were selected . . . randomly by the perpetrators," he said.