Cops honored for their role in solving triple homicide

ROBERT WILKINS, a sergeant in the Philadelphia Police Homicide Unit, and a crew of detectives and police officers from West Philadelphia's 19th District are being honored by the National Liberty Museum on Thursday for their work in investigating an armed robbery and triple homicide from last September.

A store owner, his wife and his sister were getting ready to close their corner store, Lorena's Grocery on 50th Street near Parrish, when two men burst in and fatally shot the three of them as the owner's daughters looked on.

Tips from neighbors were hard to come by in the weeks after the shooting, and police made repeated pleas to the public for help.

"The reality of it is, these are people who don't like to cooperate with the police. That was one of our major hurdles," said Wilkins, who has worked in the Homicide Unit for nearly seven years and was assigned to head a special task force that was assembled about three months after the slayings.

Wilkins, six detectives and five police officers worked with neighbors to gather information on possible suspects and began seeing a pattern of armed robberies at corner stores that seemed to involve the same suspects.

"We enlisted the help of the Narcotics Field Unit and the Criminal Intelligence Unit, who assisted in bringing people into our office to be interviewed," he said.

After stores in Southwest and North Philadelphia were robbed at gunpoint, the task force received a tip that the same man was behind those robberies - and was responsible for the unsolved triple homicide.

"The weight of the world was taken off our shoulders," Wilkins said, recalling the day his task force identified and eventually arrested the gun-toting man.

Wilkins and his task force are among 10 police department honorees from Philadelphia, Montgomery County and Delaware County being feted at the ceremony Thursday at the museum, on Chestnut Street near 3rd in Old City.

The event also will honor five fire department employees and two Philadelphia corrections officers for exemplary service.