Police: Three men shot and killed in home in Holmesburg

Philadelphia police Sunday were investigating the deaths of three men who were each shot in the head inside a home in the city's Holmesburg section Saturday night.

A woman found the men shortly before 11:30 p.m. inside a first-floor apartment in the 4600 block of Vista Street, police said. They were pronounced dead by medics.

The victims' names were not released Sunday. Police described them as two Hispanic men and one Asian man, all in their 30s. They said they did not yet know a motive for the killings.

A sign posted in the first-floor window of the brick rowhouse said: "Warning!! Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again."

Neighbors said the apartment was occupied by a group of men who spoke English and Spanish, worked on older-model cars they parked along Ditman Street near their apartment, and attracted young people to loud, late-night parties.

But Saturday night started quietly. "We never even heard the shooting," said Kelly Ludyk, who lives with one of her children across Ditman Street from the murder scene. They learned of the killings when police and other emergency responders descended on the apartment, and saw the body bags leaving early Sunday.

The 4600 block "wasn't that bad a neighborhood" when he moved in three years ago, said Paul Rukas, a warehouse manager who lives on the same stretch of Ditman facing the death house. "But this past summer, it has been."

Rukas said some quiet longtime residents had been replaced by young renters whose partying has provoked complaints and attracted police. "My wife wants to move," he added.

Ludyk said City Councilman Bobby Henon and other politicians announced meetings with neighborhood landlords several years ago to ensure their tenants would behave. "He needs to do it again," she added.

The 4700 block of Vista Street, on the other side of Torresdale Ave., was the site of another multiple murder last summer.

In August, two women, Dollie Evans, 67, and Ruby Thomas, 57, were killed in the 4700 block of Vista Street. At the time, neighbors said Evans was a likable woman whose nickname was "Grandmom." At his preliminary hearing in November, James Mears, the man charged with killing the two women, said the motive was to steal money and drugs from Evans, who he said sold crack cocaine.

Evans was shot in the back of the head. Thomas, her roommate, also was shot in the head and had an electrical cord wrapped around her neck.

Mears said at his preliminary hearing that another man had been the shooter. Police have not charged anyone else with those killings.