Man responds to online ad for ATV, gets killed

A 27-year-old New Jersey man found a great deal on Craigslist for an all-terrain vehicle in Philadelphia, came to the city for the purchase Friday night - and was fatally shot, police said.

The victim arrived about 11 p.m. in East Oak Lane with two friends, looking for the seller of the ATV, police said.

Near the intersection of Walnut Lane and Hollis Street, the victim got out of his car and spoke with a man wearing a white towel on his head.

Witnesses told police the man claimed to be the seller and directed the victim to walk down the street to inspect the four-wheeler. The man's two friends stayed in the car.

Once the would-be buyer was out of sight, his friends said they heard two gunshots.

Police quickly arrived and found the man with a gunshot wound to the left side of his face. Medics pronounced him dead at the scene at 11:23 p.m.

Police said they had made no arrests in the killing as of Saturday night, but said they were questioning a Willow Grove man and had seized his car. Investigators also were reportedly viewing surveillance video from a nearby corner store.

Some media reports said the victim was Daniel Cook from Williamstown in Gloucester County.

Law enforcement officials say criminals are increasingly using online marketing schemes to lure victims and then attack would-be buyers.

Officials from Craigslist, based in San Francisco, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Last month, three San Diego men were sentenced in the robbery and slaying of a college student who answered a Craigslist ad. Authorities said the men lured 18-year-old Garrett Berki in 2011 with an ad offering a laptop computer.

In March, a self-styled street preacher was convicted in Ohio of killing three down-and-out men lured by bogus Craigslist job offers.

Jurors recommended the death penalty for 53-year-old Richard Beasley after convicting him of teaming up with a teenager in 2011 to lure men with offers of farmhand jobs in southeast Ohio and to rob them. Three men were killed, and a fourth who was wounded testified at Beasley's trial.