Nutter on violence: ‘Enough is enough’

Mayor Nutter spent Monday attending events to commemorate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his teachings of peace and nonviolence - a legacy overshadowed in Philadelphia by the recent surge in killings on the city's streets.

The mayor's last stop of the day was a packed Kensington church, where he spoke to a congregation that included about a dozen family members mourning the young victims of a quadruple shooting last week.

He talked to them in often hushed tones about their loss, and about his own frustration and struggle with the deaths.

"I'm still in pain," he said. "I'm not afraid to admit it."

Nutter, who was joined at Bethel Temple Community Bible Church by District Attorney Seth Williams and other city officials, warned of the corrosive nature of unabated violence.

"The fabric of our human nature is being ripped apart piece by piece," he said. "And what happens? You don't have a fabric at some point."

The weekend brought even more tragic news when Kevin Kless, a young Temple University graduate, was beaten to death early Saturday in Old City by three men who apparently believed, mistakenly, that Kless had yelled at them in traffic.

Nutter said he called Kless' mother Monday but found himself grasping for words in the face of such an inexplicable crime.

"We're deeply sorry. We're in pain," he said he told Kendall Kless. "We'll do our best to get the people who did this, because there's no explaining what they did."

In all, the city has had 17 homicides this month through Sunday night - the most in that same stretch of January in five years.

"Unfortunately, we got off to a bad start," Nutter said. "I refuse to believe that Philadelphians are so much different, so much more murderous . . . than people anywhere else."

Police said there had not been any homicides as of late Monday on Martin Luther King's Birthday.

"If we can't be nonviolent on this day, then I don't know what we're waiting for," Nutter said. "If we can be nonviolent today, then maybe we can be nonviolent tomorrow."

Nutter has said that more officers would hit the streets by summer, and he has hinted at a coming crackdown on illegal guns.

But he questioned how more officers could have stopped the shooting last week that claimed three teenagers in Juniata Park.

In that case, police have charged Axel Barreto, a 30-year-old man, with firing into a carload of seven teens who had come to fight with his stepsons. Three were killed - Joshua Soto, 14; Dante Lugo, 14; and Javier Orlandi, 16. A fourth teen was hit in the neck.

"How would we have known someone would do something like that in this city?" Nutter asked. "Well, I don't know, because that's just evil. I don't know what to do with evil except to snatch it out of there."

Nutter said Barreto gave his gun to someone else before his arrest. He said that people know police are looking for that person and the gun, but that no one has come forward with information.

"We have to say, as a city, 'Enough is enough. I can't take this anymore,' " he said. "When are we going to start stepping up and ending our silence?"

Police are also still searching for the men who beat Kless and fled in a maroon Mazda 626.

Authorities encouraged anyone with information about the beating to call homicide detectives at 215-686-3334 or 911.