Cop hit, suspect killed in NE Philly shootout

A SWAT police officer was shot in his bulletproof vest and a murder suspect was killed in an exchange of gunfire Tuesday morning in Northeast Philadelphia, police said.

Police said the shooting occurred about 6:10 a.m. while officers were executing an arrest warrant at the Northbrook Apartments on the 800 block of Riverside Drive.

The SWAT officer, a 17-year veteran and father of two, was taken to Aria Hospital's Torresdale Campus for treatment of a bruise caused by the impact of the bullet on his vest.

The officer was released from the hospital later Wednesday morning.

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said SWAT vests have an extra-long special flap and that if the officer had been wearing a standard street vest he could have been killed or wounded. Ramsey said this was the second time the officer had been shot.

The suspect, identified by various sources as Devon Guisherd, 27, also was taken to Aria Torresdale, where he was pronounced dead at 6:42 a.m., police said.

Guisherd has been sought in the Sept. 14 killing of Megan Doto, 25, a pregnant woman who had been hit by a stray bullet while sitting outside her Frankford.

Police confirmed the the warrant involved the Doto case but did not formally identify Guisherd as the slain suspect.

Ramsey said earlier that homicide detectives had gotten word of where the suspect in the case was hiding out and obtained what's known as a high-risk warrant. In those cases, the department's SWAT team is called in to enter the residence.

The SWAT team had breached the door of the apartment when the suspect grabbed an object and took off, with the officers in pursuit. Officers couldn't clearly see the object -- until the man spun around and fired a .40-caliber bullet into the stomach of portion of the SWAT officer's bulletproof vest, Ramsey said. The officer returned fire and hit the man in the chest, fatally wounding him.

Doto, 25, was eight months pregnant when she was shot, and her infant daughter died 12 hours after she was delivered in an emergency procedure at Temple University Hospital.

The young mother was shot in the face while sitting in a lawn chair on Adams Avenue in Frankford when a gunman fired 10 or 11 shots at a white car driving down Griscom Street, 100 yards away.

Investigators at the time said they believed the shooting was part of an ongoing drug battle, and quickly identified Guisherd as a suspect. His brother was shot dead about a month earlier, a few blocks from where Doto was killed. And he had a reputation for carrying -- and firing -- a gun in the neighborhood, and was bent on revenge, an investigative source said.

A $40,000 reward had been offered in the case.

Aubrey Whelan is an Inquirer staff writer.