Man surrenders in shooting of 'cheerful, energetic' girl, 15

NONE OF THE bullets fired during a street fight Monday afternoon along North Broad Street had high-school sophomore Aisha Abdur Rahman's name on it.

But the world is cruel, and one of those bullets traveled a half-block from where the gunman stood near Somerville Avenue and tore into the beautiful 15-year-old girl's back as she walked home from a day of classes at nearby Delaware Valley Charter High School, fatally wounding her just steps from Albert Einstein Medical Center.

Darian Person, 19 - the high-school dropout accused of pulling the trigger when that street fight got out of hand, killing Rahman and critically wounding a 19-year-old man - surrendered to police last night, a few hours after Homicide Capt. James Clark identified him as the shooter during a news conference and publicized his mug shot.

Person, whom Clark described as being called on as "the muscle" for one group involved in the fight, has a lengthy criminal history, including a number of violent offenses, police said.

Clark told the Daily News last night that the accused gunman was flanked by relatives when he surrendered to cops after Philadelphia police and U.S. Marshals launched a manhunt for him around his Nicetown home. Members of Person's family are no strangers to gun violence: Two years ago this month, the accused shooter's brother, Darius Person, died at 16 after he was shot - allegedly by accident - in a Nicetown park about three blocks from the family's home on Rowan Street near Wayne Avenue.

Darian Person might've been considering turning his life around and trying to escape the grips of street violence as recently as last week. John Wilson, a coordinator from the Nicetown Community Development Corp., said he had been talking to the young man about finding job training about a week ago.

"I got the sense that he kind of needed some guidance," Wilson said last night. "So every now and then, I would see him and try to help him."

As for the fight that eventually led to the gunfire on Monday, Clark said that police aren't sure exactly what it was about, but that it appears to have started among a group of girls last week and escalated on Twitter and Instagram over the weekend.

"Obviously it was childish," Clark said. "Most of the kids are like in 10th and 11th grade. It started with young ladies having some type of issue, then it spread to the guys, so something very small and trivial ultimately ended up with this young lady being killed."

The two warring groups - a mix of about 20 to 30 people, students from the high school and nonstudents, according to Clark - decided to meet at Broad and Olney after school Monday to fight.

Police pushed the unruly crowd away from the Olney Transportation Center, a major transit hub at the intersection, Clark said, and the group moved south along Broad Street, to just past Einstein Hospital, near Somerville Avenue, where the fighting erupted again.

Person, who did not attend Delaware Valley Charter, pulled a gun at that point and fired several shots, Clark said.

He was the only gunman, the captain added. "He came with a gun and, unfortunately, he used it."

Police last night had not yet been able to speak with the surviving victim, so his involvement in the fight, if any, was unclear. Rahman, cops said, was a bystander walking with a friend away from the brawl.

The tight-knit Delaware Valley Charter community of students from around the city yesterday was grieving the loss of the bright, popular sophomore, said school CEO Ernest Holiday, who has worked at the charter for a decade.

"This young lady was well-liked. She was cheerful and energetic, and everybody misses her," Holiday said. "Students have been doing murals and posters up and down the hallways. We let them do that as a way of expressing their grief. We also have grief counselors available."

Photos of Rahman's school locker, adorned with memorials scrawled in marker on poster board, surfaced on Twitter yesterday.

Monday's shooting was the second instance of gun violence to scar the school, on Old York Road near Duncannon Avenue in Logan, in recent memory. In January, two students were wounded in the school's gym when a student who had brought a gun into the school fired it accidentally.

Despite police's account of the fight that sparked Monday's shooting, Holiday said the school's investigation so far has revealed that the older sister of a student - who is not a student herself - is the melee's only obvious connection to the school. That woman, according to Holiday, was somehow involved in the initial altercation at Broad and Olney with young men who he said also were not Delaware Valley students.

"Just what we sort of pieced together, if anything, it may be the connection, because the sister doesn't go to our school; she's an older girl. The boys she got in an altercation with didn't go to our school," Holiday said. "[Based on] what we gathered from our internal investigation, we don't place any of our students up there in that group."

Holiday said that the school prides itself on being safe, and that he believes it is safer now than before the January shooting. Other than that shooting and this week's, which happened off school grounds, the CEO said he could recall no violent incidents.

In the wake of Rahman's tragic death, Holiday said, the school community needs to heal.

"Our students are very resilient," he said. "They'll bounce back, but it's just going to take time."

- Staff writer Vinny Vella contributed to this report

Blog: PhillyConfidential.com