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Police seek leads for killer of Port Richmond mother

Brian Pabon poked his head into the door of Stephanie Dzikowski's home Thursday night and called out for his 22-year-old neighbor.

Investigators outside a Port Richmond home after a woman who lived there was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head late Thursday.
Investigators outside a Port Richmond home after a woman who lived there was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head late Thursday.Read moreJOSEPH KACZMAREK / For The Inquirer

Brian Pabon poked his head into the door of Stephanie Dzikowski's home Thursday night and called out for his 22-year-old neighbor.

"Yo, Steph!" he yelled urgently. "Yo, Steph!"

No answer.

Moments later, Dzikowski's boyfriend, Sean Sadowniczak, came running down the 3000 block of Aramingo Avenue and charged through the front door. Pabon, 19, quickly followed.

Both men had received a phone call from another neighbor about a gunshot echoing from the rowhouse where Dzikowski lived with her father, her boyfriend, and their 2-year-old daughter, Clarissa.

But just before 11 p.m. Thursday, neighbors said, only Dzikowski and Clarissa were home.

Pabon and Sadowniczak, 20, rushed upstairs and found Clarissa sitting silently on the couple's bed.

At first, the men didn't notice Dzikowski's body lying slumped against the bedroom wall - a pool of blood swelling around her body, a bullet hole in the left side of her head.

The men searched around the house for a few minutes before heading back up to the bedroom.

That, Pabon said, is when Sadowniczak let out a scream.

"I ain't never seen a grown man scream and cry like that," Pabon recalled Friday.

Dzikowski - a dental assistant popular with her neighbors, a devoted mother, and a woman determined to improve her lot in life - was pronounced dead at 11:06 p.m., police said.

Officials on Friday released few details about the killing.

Police Capt. Drew Techner told reporters at the scene overnight that Dzikowski was found in a second-floor bedroom with Clarissa, who was unharmed. But he did not say whether a weapon had been found or provide any other details other than to say no arrests had been made.

That led rumors to fly on the block: speculation about a man in a hoodie stalking the house on a chrome bike, a story about how the assailant was chased by a neighbor who was unable to catch up.

The killing chilled many residents. They were horrified by the crime's brutality and its intimacy: in the bedroom, with a toddler nearby, past the couple's pit bull, and, neighbors said, during a short stretch when Sadowniczak was at the corner store buying iced tea and milk.

Marie Larkins, 48, who lives on the block, said her family had known the victim for most of her life - and that they had no idea who would have wanted to harm her.

"She was like a niece to us," Larkins said. "We're all just like, 'We don't know who would do this.' "

Larkins' niece Elizabeth Sterling, 25, said one thought kept running through her mind: "This can't be true."

A year into her career as a dental assistant, and about to move into a new home with Sadowniczak, Dzikowski was said to have had no enemies and a bright future ahead.

"She had everything going for her," said Michael McGovern, 32, a cousin.

Matthew Harvey, 23, Sadowniczak's brother, said: "She was a good woman to my brother. She was a fantastic mom."

Larkins and Sterling said they were shaken by their own experience with the crime Thursday night.

Sadowniczak banged on their door, Larkins recalled, screaming, "Somebody killed Stephanie! Somebody killed Stephanie!"

Larkins and Sterling ran to the Dzikowski house and found their friend covered with blood, lying against her bedroom wall.

They tried to lay her flat and perform CPR, Larkins said, but quickly realized it was too late.

"I was shaking," Larkins said. "My whole insides were shaking."

Sterling was yelling at Dzikowski, as if to wake her friend.

"Steph! Steph! Steph!" she screamed.

Larkins told her it would do no good.

"She's gone," Larkins recalls telling Sterling. "There's nothing we can do."

Hours after the crime, a memorial of flowers and candles took shape in front of the victim's home, and neighbors prepared for a vigil Friday night.

Like others, McGovern said he was eager to learn who killed his cousin.

"If I had the slightest idea," he said, "I'd probably be out there looking for him myself."