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Suspect charged in killing of girl, 15

The fight started last week, mostly among a group of teenage girls, some from Delaware Valley Charter High School, police say.

Darian Person
Darian PersonRead morePhiladelphia Police Department

Update: Darian Person was charged Wednesday with murder, attempted murder, conspiracy and related weapons offenses in the slaying of Aisha Abdur Rhaman and the wounding of a 19-year-old man, according to court records.

Earlier Story:

The fight started last week, mostly among a group of teenage girls, some from Delaware Valley Charter High School, police say.

Then boys got involved, and the argument festered over the weekend, with the teenagers hurling taunts and threats over social media. Through the Internet sniping, a fight was arranged for Monday, near the Olney Transportation Center.

By then, the dispute had spread into the surrounding neighborhood and beyond. Darian Person, a 19-year-old from Nicetown, was called in as "muscle," police said.

On Monday, police say, he showed up at Broad and Olney with what police believe was a revolver.

First, the teens fought by the McDonald's near the transportation center. SEPTA police broke up the crowd, moving them south toward Einstein Medical Center.

That's when they heard the gunfire. Police say the argument continued as the group moved away, and in the midst of it, Person fired from three to five shots.

One of them hit 15-year-old Aisha Abdur Rhaman in the back. A student at Delaware Valley Charter, she was a block away from the fight, walking home with a friend.

Responding officers found her collapsed under some trees on the hospital lawn next to the sidewalk, police said. She died at Einstein shortly afterward.

A 19-year-old also was struck. He remains in critical condition.

At an afternoon news conference, Homicide Capt. James Clark described Person as "a bad guy from the neighborhood."

By Tuesday night, police said, Person had turned himself in at Police Headquarters and was being questioned by detectives.

Clark said the conflict that led to Abdur Rhaman's death was "childish."

"Something very small and trivial ultimately ended up with this young lady being killed," he said.

Thomas J. Nestel, chief of SEPTA police, said his department has officers assigned to the transportation center every day around the time of school dismissal. The officers are in daily contact with officials from schools whose students use the trains, he said.

There was no intelligence Monday about a fight brewing, Nestel said.

On Tuesday, Abdur Rhaman's friends and classmates decorated her locker at school with signs, poems, and prayers. The school, which has students in grades 9 through 12, is two blocks from where Abdur Rhaman was shot.

Students were dismissed early Monday. A gray teddy bear tied with a red ribbon sat outside the gates of Einstein at the spot where Abdur Rhaman fell.

CEO Ernest Holiday said the school had grief counselors on hand for students.

He said there had been a fight at the school last week, but that by Monday the dispute had become "a totally neighborhood-related thing" that did not involve Delaware Valley students.

He described Abdur Rhaman as a bright girl with "a gorgeous smile" who excelled academically.

A former cheerleader, she was involved in a modeling program and hoped to join the basketball team this fall, he said. She had dreams of becoming an actress or a nurse, he said.

"She was very well liked by everyone," he said. "She was a wonderful girl."

In a statement Tuesday, the school said Abdur Rhaman was "another victim of the senseless violence with which this city has become all too familiar."

The school was involved in a shooting incident in January in which two students were wounded when a gun brought there by a former student accidentally discharged.

Benjamin Foots, 40, a family friend who was at the hospital after Monday's shooting, said the girl came from a "very tight-knit family."

A message circulating on Twitter said the girl's family was asking her friends not to post any pictures of her on social media. A woman who identified herself as Abdur Rhaman's aunt outside the family home Tuesday said the girl's parents were too distraught to speak.

215-854-2961 @aubreyjwhelan