Man fatally shot on crowded N. Philadelphia street

A 28-year-old man died at the hospital after he suffered several gunshot wounds to his chest and arm on Edgley Street near 23rd in North Philadelphia early Wednesday evening, cops said.

Two men were arguing around 5:15 p.m. on the block crowded with children playing outside in the late-afternoon sun before one of them pulled a gun and began shooting the other, investigators said. Cops believe the victim may have accused the shooter of stealing a bike.

The man was rushed to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:36 p.m., police said.

Chief Inspector Scott Small said 10 .40-caliber shell casings were found at the scene, and three pools of blood marked the street where the man was shot and the sidewalk where he eventually collapsed.

One bullet pierced a metal door of a community center at 23rd and Edgley, Small said. Cops were unsure if anyone was inside at the time, but they found the bullet inside the door.

Cops described the shooter as a 5-foot-7 man who wore a dark hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans and was last seen running south on 23rd Street toward Diamond. Two witnesses were taken to be interviewed by homicide detectives, Small said.

Parents on the block expressed anger about the violence and crime that plagues the area as they watched cops investigate.

"You should've seen all the kids outside," said a mother of two small children who declined to give her name. "We're already scared, because it's all this drama down here. The kids are scared."

Another neighbor who balanced her toddler son on her hip as she watched cops on the block said she had been pulling up to the block with the boy when the gunfire broke out.

"I was pulling up in a cab, then we were running," she said before going back inside her home, telling her older child, "Come on, I don't want you out here today."

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey surveyed the scene as crime-scene unit investigators worked.

"It's a warm day. I'm amazed nobody else got hurt," he said.

This was the second time in three days that gunfire broke out in broad daylight within yards of children playing, after a man was shot dead on a crowded playground at 21st and Conlyn streets in East Germantown on Monday.

"They don't even care there's kids out here," said the woman who lives on the block where the man was killed Wednesday. "They could've shot any of us."