17-year-old fatally shot in N. Phila.
Detectives sought a motive yesterday in a shooting across the street from a North Philadelphia church that left a 17-year-old youth dead and a bystander wounded.
Detectives sought a motive yesterday in a shooting across the street from a North Philadelphia church that left a 17-year-old youth dead and a bystander wounded.
Donte Graham, who lived in the Oxford Circle section of Philadelphia, was shot in the chest about 9:45 p.m. Wednesday on Lehigh Avenue near 24th Street, in the shadow of St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church, and was pronounced dead minutes later at Temple University Hospital.
The bystander, a 48-year-old man, was in stable condition at Temple with a leg wound, police said.
Homicide Sgt. Anthony McFadden said Graham used to live in the Swampoodle neighborhood and returned regularly to be with his friends.
McFadden said detectives did not know if the shooting was gang-related or had some other cause.
Graham's slaying was the 236th in the city this year.
Hours earlier, Jermaine Monroe, 33, who was shot July 15 in East Germantown, died of his wounds at Alfred Einstein Medical Center, making him the 235th homicide victim in the year.
The motive in that shooting remains a mystery, police said.
Detectives in the meantime were trying to unravel the circumstances behind the shooting at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday of a woman, 59, and her 14-year-old grandson in North Philadelphia's Franklinville section.
Police said the pair, who were in stable condition yesterday at Temple University, were sitting on their stoop on the 800 block of Venango when gunfire erupted. The woman was shot in the head and the boy in the wrist.
Across the State
Allegheny County is on pace to set a homicide record.
The 61 killings so far this year in Pittsburgh and the rest of the county outpace the 45 during the same period in 2003, which was the county's deadliest year with 125 people killed.
"That is some sort of significant trend upwards in homicides," said county Medical Examiner Karl E. Williams. "I have no doubt it's due to the extraordinarily ugly culture of drugs and guns."
Lt. Christopher Kearns of the county police homicide unit said homicide detectives are seeing an increase in killings related to armed robberies involving drugs.
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
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