Dad tells of being shot while recovering daughter's stolen bike

The South Philadelphia street where a group of teens grabbed a 12-year-old girl's bicycle Monday afternoon is a decent, well-kept block where neighbors carefully tend to flowers in window boxes.

But the neighbors' sense of peace was shaken about 4:25 p.m. that day when one of the teens shot the girl's father in the abdomen nearby at 5th and Moore streets, after he drove through the neighborhood searching for the bike. The father was released from Jefferson Hospital on Monday night.

"I don't think we've ever had an incident like this," said a man named Rick, a neighbor of the dad.

The dad, who showed a bullet wound on the left side of his lower abdomen, was walking around and talking with neighbors yesterday afternoon. He said the bullet went straight through him and "was probably a .32-caliber or .380 bullet."

The 38-year-old father said he had been at work early Monday when his daughter called to say that her bike had been stolen from the front steps of their house.

When he got home, the self-employed man said he and his 10-year-old son got in his van and started driving around looking for the bike.

At 5th and Moore streets, he spotted a group of teens, all about 15 years old, the father said. One was riding his daughter's bike.

"It was a blue bicycle with a basket," said the man, who asked that his name not be published.

The father said he got of the van and told the kids, " 'Yo, this is my bike.' "

"The one kid jumped off the bike immediately," the father said. But another kid in the group yelled at him that he couldn't take his buddy's bike.

The father grabbed the bike, put it in his van and closed the door.

"That's when one of the other kids came up and shot," he said.

The man said the teen shot at him twice but hit him only once.

After being shot, the man, who is fit and muscular, started to lunge after the kid who shot him, but the teen ran away.

The father then drove himself to the hospital.

Though he got his daughter's bike back, the man said he is upset that police still have his van and his keys. "It's all about paperwork," he said.

At the corner of 5th and Moore, a man in one of the stores there said he heard two shots Monday but didn't see anything.

Yesterday, police said the teen who shot the father is still at large and no arrests have been made.

But the father and a woman at 5th and Moore said teens in the area "steal bikes all the time."

The wounded father said his 10-year-old son wasn't traumatized by witnessing the shooting.

"He was mad that we were unarmed," the dad said.