For 3, death came randomly

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

In the absence of answers, the family of Francisco Rodriguez clings to his number.

"He was 171," his mother and sisters keep saying, as if Rodriguez' place in this year's homicide toll could explain why the maintenance mechanic was gunned down early on June 5 while waiting to catch a bus home from work.

With Philadelphia's death toll at 233 yesterday, some families are struggling to understand how their loved ones were killed while simply going about their daily lives.

Rodriguez, 48, who worked for the realty company Philly Gardens, had been paged to fix a shower head at a North Philadelphia apartment complex. His sister, Linda Williams, asked if he didn't want to wait until morning.

"I'll just go, it's nice out,'" she remembers Frankie saying, in what would be their last conversation.

Kwok Wai Ho, 69, was taking his daily after-dinner walk on July 10 outside his Lawncrest home when police say he was beaten and left brain-dead by one of a group of teens.

Tykeem Law, 14, was riding his bike just south of the Italian Market on July 17 when police say an 18-year-old, Charles Meyers, shot and killed him for not steering his bicycle out of the way of Meyers' car quickly enough.

According to the FBI, 14 percent of all homicide victims in 2005 were attacked by strangers. It's these random killings, says Philadelphia counselor, author, and victims' rights advocate Kathleen O'Hara, that are particularly hard for Americans to accept.

"People in this country," she says, "don't want to believe that their precious American dream can be threatened by random violence. They're told that if they do the right thing and pay their taxes, nothing bad is going to happen. I think that's why people often attach shame and stigma to victims - because they must have been doing something wrong."

O'Hara's own son, Aaron, was killed in 1999 while attending a Catholic college in Ohio. "He was not engaged in anything illegal but sleeping in his own bed," she says, "when he and his roommate were beaten, kidnapped, taken into the woods in Pennsylvania and shot."

Rodriguez' family is especially frustrated because an arrest was made - and then charges were dropped.

Police say the motive was probably robbery, which bewilders the family since Rodriguez' wallet remained intact - even after he was shot three times at Broad and Lindley.

After leaving a half-dozen messages in three days for a homicide detective on the case, Rodriguez' sister, Gina Torres, said she finally asked a police officer who answered the phone how she could get her calls returned. He answered, she said, "You know your loved one wasn't the only homicide in the city of Philadelphia."

Police spokesman Capt. Benjamin Naish said yesterday that with rising numbers of homicides, families may face some delay in returned phone calls. "The detectives are working as hard and diligently as possible," he said.

Mazie Alpert tries to imagine the conversation between a 17-year-old and his friends before the teen allegedly put her uncle Kwok Wai Ho in a chokehold and then shoved him to the pavement, smashing his skull.

"Do they say, 'We have nothing to do. Let's go kill someone, or beat someone, or rob someone?'" she asks.

Soon after the family posted a $10,000 reward for information about the killing, at least one witness came forward and Marcquis Walker-Williams was charged in Ho's death.

Alpert, 34, has spent years searching for safety. When she was young, her Chinese immigrant family moved from South Philadelphia to Cherry Hill - only to have her grandmother tied up and the new home burglarized twice. Even though she's now married to a "wonderful man who's given me such security in life," and lives in an affluent New Jersey suburb, her uncle's brutal death near Oxford Circle brought it all back.

"The first night after my uncle's head got bashed in," she says, "my husband was away on business." Driving home that night, Alpert says, "I had a panic attack."

"I had such fear," she says, "My heart was pounding . . . Could they possibly come over here?"

Since then, she says, her 7-year old has asked her, "Mom, are they going to come to our house?" Her husband, she says, "put a fence around me. But it's an imaginary fence and then this happens, and it all comes back."

Ho was taken off life support a week after the attack. He was buried on Saturday. His family has established the Kwok Wai Ho Foundation, overseen by the Citizens Crime Commission - to "place a bounty on the head of anyone who attacks an Asian American in the community," said Alpert's brother-in-law, Ric Cohen.

"Even if we live in a safe area," Cohen says, "the crime is coming to us."