Man shot in Harrowgate, found dead
Cops responding to a call for a hospital case found a man dead of two gunshot wounds on a Harrowgate street Wednesday night.
This post has been updated.
Cops responding to a call for a hospital case found a man dead of two gunshot wounds on a street in Harrowgate Wednesday night.
"I'm sitting here on my porch here and I saw the guy walk down the block," one neighbor who asked not to be identified said. "Then I go up to pick up my wife and I look, and he's face-down in the fetal position with blood coming from somewhere."
The unidentified victim, who police estimated was 18 to 20 years old, was pronounced dead on the sidewalk in front of rowhouses on Russell Street near H at 10:53 p.m., police said. He had been shot once in the chest and once in the head.
He was the second young man shot dead in Philadelphia Wednesday. A 22-year-old man died after he was shot in Kingsessing earlier in the evening.
Investigators believe the Harrowgate shooting started on Tioga Street just north of where the man's body was found, because cops found at least one shell casing in the middle of the block there.
Police also found a flathead screwdriver at H and Schiller streets that they said was part of the crime scene, but they were unsure early Thursday morning how it was connected to the homicide.
"I was driving, so I pulled up and got out," the neighbor, who found the body and alerted police, said, adding that he moved onto the block from New York within the last year. "There was a big blood stain on the ground."
Only a few other residents of the street moved quietly in and out of their houses on the narrow block, and windchimes rang eerily from one house near where the man's body lay covered with a bloodstained white sheet. Stray cats -- and one that belonged to a neighbor trying to coax it back home -- slinked around the scene early Thursday morning at police continued to investigate.
Neighbors told police they didn't hear any gunshots, one investigator said, and there weren't any solid witnesses to the shooting.
The neighbor on the block who saw the body said there was often drug action on the corner, and that people were usually shuffling by his porch all hours of the night, but said he didn't notice anyone in the area other than the victim Wednesday night.
"It's always something," he said. "I don't know why I moved here. I've got two small kids. I don't want them exposed to this."