Serving a warrant, cops find suspect in Gallery beating

Investigators with the court system's bench warrant unit got a two-for-one deal Saturday when serving a warrant on a woman led them to one of the three men allegedly responsible for Wednesday's beating of 83-year-old John Gabel inside the men's room in the Gallery.

Lt. Sam Turner and his team converged on a notorious drug lair on Simpson Street near Pearl, in West Philadelphia, about 1:30 a.m. Saturday to serve a warrant on a woman wanted for a probation violation.

"The female who was the target of our investigation and another male tried to flee out the back," Turner said.

The male, later identified by police as Joseph Peruto, 27, of 66th Street near Lansdowne Avenue, in West Philadelphia, was acting strangely, police said.

When Turner and his detectives brought Peruto back into the house, he mentioned information about the robbery and beating of the elderly World War II vet.

"Peruto said some things specific to the investigation, such as very intimate details of the robbery," Turner said, declining to reveal the exact words Peruto used.

Gabel, a resident of East Falls who regularly made trips to the Center City shopping mall for exercise, was beaten unconscious and robbed of $50 Wednesday afternoon as he walked into the men's restroom, police said.

Gabel remains in the intensive-care unit of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in good condition.

Peruto was jailed after failing to post 10 percent of $250,000 bail, court records show.

He is charged with aggravated assault, robbery, criminal conspiracy, theft and related charges in the incident, police said.

"Our administration is in the business of taking bad guys off the street, and this guy was definitely one of them," Turner said.

"Here you had an 80-something World War II vet who just went to the Gallery to get some exercise," Turner said of Gabel. "He should not have been victimized in that kind of way. We hope that the citizens of Philadelphia will be happy to know that this guy is off the streets."

Court records also show that Peruto was arrested for providing false identification to a police officer on Aug. 10, and for drug possession in 2005. *