Booted smoker returns to bar, shoots 6 customers, one fatally

A man who was kicked out of a Nicetown bar for smoking inside returned to the tavern yesterday and shot six people, including a father of two who died from his injuries, according to police.

Carl Sharper, 43, had just stopped at the Genesis Tavern, on Wayne Avenue near Roberts, to pick up food when an aggrieved patron came in and indiscriminately opened fire around 12:45 a.m., said Sharper's father, Simon, and police.

Sharper was shot once in the back of the head and pronounced dead at Albert Einstein Medical Center at 1:10 a.m., police said.

Of the five others who were injured, two - a 32-year-old man who was shot in the back and a 44-year-old woman who was shot in the abdomen - remained in critical condition at Temple University Hospital yesterday.

A 36-year-old man who was shot in the right calf was treated and released from Temple. Two women in their 20s were treated for graze wounds, according to police.

The shooter was described as a black man, about 6 feet tall and in his 30s. He had a beard and was wearing a white shirt and khaki pants, police said.

Sharper, a father of two girls, ages 11 and 19, had been at his uncle's house nearby when he went to pick up food from Genesis, his father said.

"He was just passing through," Simon Sharper said. "He told his uncle he wasn't going to stay long. He said he'd be right back."

Sharper worked for the Philadelphia Water Department as a technician, his father said. He was to celebrate his 44th birthday on Aug. 13 and was to wed on Aug. 27.

Aside from his fiancée and children, Sharper leaves behind his parents and two sisters. Simon Sharper said that he moved his family here from Guyana more than 30 years ago to give his children a better life.

"I do not regret coming, because they did have a better life and education," he said. "They were doing well, until this incident."