Two Southwest gang thugs get prison for bystander slaying

RONALD OCKIMEY and Leon Owens, both armed with semi-automatic handguns, meant to kill on the evening of April 11, 2012.

Their Southwest Philadelphia gang, the Backstreet Boys, was beefing with a rival gang, the Greenway Boys.

So, when Ockimey, Owens and a third gunman spotted two Greenway members exiting a convenience store at 53rd and Greenway streets, they started to shoot.

At least 17 rounds drove the Greenway members back into the store, where they drew weapons and returned fire.

In all the shooting, none of the gunmen on either side was struck.

But Markel Wright, 22, who was unarmed and not believed to be a target, was hit in the side after stepping out of the store. A lone bullet traveled upward through his neck and exited below an eye.

Wright, a Peirce College business major who had no criminal record, died there, the potato chips he had just purchased scattered on the sidewalk.

In June, a jury convicted Ockimey, 27, and Owens, 35, of third-degree murder and related counts in Wright's slaying. Their accomplice was not charged.

Yesterday, Common Pleas Judge Lillian Ransom sentenced both defendants to state prison terms that are longer than their victim lived: Ockimey received 23 to 50 years; Owens, 25 to 50 years.

Falaka Wright, the victim's mother, said he would have turned 25 tomorrow. Waiting for his killers to receive justice was difficult, she said.

"Your life is in the balance. You really can't move forward. You're just stuck and worried and stressing more," she said.

Wright believes that the defendants were not convicted of first-degree murder - which would have drawn life sentences without parole - because the intended targets failed to appear in court to identify them. That upsets her greatly.

"I think it's a sin and a shame, I really do. I think it's just disgraceful," Wright said.

"This is why these hoodlums continue to kill people on the streets of Philadelphia, because they don't do anything to them."