Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Cops ID New Year's Day homicide victims

Philadelphia police have identified the three young men who were killed in separate slayings during the first hours of 2013.

Police said 16-year-old Jaymire Rustin was the city's first murder victim of the year. He was gunned down outside a house on the 5600 block of Carpenter Street at about 12:30 a.m.

Then, 24-year-old Tyjuan Shields was fatally shot inside a home on the 1600 block of Pratt Street at about 2:30 a.m., police said.

And at about 3:30 a.m., 23-year-old Stephen Johnson was shot to death inside a house on the 1700 block of Venango Street. Two other men were shot in that incident and survived; a woman was also injured when she jumped from second-floor window the avoid the gunfire.

Investigators believe an argument was the motive in all three killings, said Officer Christine O'Brien, a police spokeswoman.

No one has been arrested in connection with any of the homicides, she said.

Philadelphia recorded 329 killings in 2012, up from 324 in 2011, according to police statistics. It was the third-straight year the number of murders in the city has increased.