Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Gunman wounds at least six officers
PHILADELPHIA — At least one gunman opened fire on police Wednesday as they were serving a drug warrant, wounding six officers and triggering a standoff that extended into the night, authorities said.
Two other officers were trapped inside the house for about five hours after the shooting broke out but were freed by a SWAT team well after darkness fell on the residential neighborhood.
None of the officers’ injuries was considered life-threatening and they were being treated at hospitals, police Sgt. Eric Gripp said.
The shooting began around 4:30 p.m. as officers went to a home in a north Philadelphia neighborhood of brick and stone rowhomes to serve a narcotics warrant in an operation “that went awry almost immediately,” Police Commissioner Richard Ross said.
“I was just coming off the train and I was walking upstairs and there were people running back downstairs who said that there was someone up there shooting cops,” said Abdul Rahman Muhammad, 21, an off-duty medic. “There was just a lot of screaming and chaos.”
Ross said the gunfire had broken out as officers were moving toward the kitchen in the back of the house. They returned fire, he said, and some jumped out of windows to escape a “barrage of bullets.”
Shots were still being fired three hours later, police said, and officers returned fire.
“It’s nothing short of a miracle that we don’t have multiple officers killed today,” the commissioner said. One officer was grazed in the head. Another was shot in the arms. All six were expected to recover, Ross said.
Around 9:30 p.m., police said, a SWAT team freed the two officers who had been trapped inside, along with three people identified as prisoners, but the gunman remained barricaded.
Police were imploring him to surrender, at one point patching in his lawyer on the phone with him to try to persuade him to give up, Ross said.
“We’re doing everything within our power to get him to come out,” Ross said, adding: “He has the highest assurance he’s not going to be harmed when he comes out.”
Temple University locked down part of its campus, and several children and staff were trapped for some time in a nearby day care.
Police tried to push crowds of onlookers and residents back from the scene. In police radio broadcasts, officers could be heard calling for backup as reports of officers getting shot poured in.
Dozens of officers on foot lined the streets. Others were in cars and some on horses.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said its agents went to the scene to assist Philadelphia police.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said he was thankful that officers’ injuries weren’t life-threatening. Kenney said he spoke with all six officers and they were in good spirits. He said seeing an officer’s young sons made him realize how their lives could have changed had things gone a little differently.
“I’m a little angry about someone having all that weaponry and all that firepower, but we’ll get to that another day,” Kenney said.
The shooting came two days after a gunbattle in Southern California left one California Highway Patrol officer dead and two others injured.
Heather Logan, 47, who lives on North 15th Street, about a block from the shooting, said she dived for safety when the shots started.
“We were ducking behind cars,” she said. “It was like Beirut out here for a little bit.”
Vernon Fields, the chef at Tasteful Sensations Seafood and Soul Food, said that he went outside to see what was going on and heard gunshots coming from several blocks away.
“We smelled the gunfire,” he said. “We saw people running down the street — police officers ducking and getting their weapons out.”
Abi Oshogbo, 39, who lives less than three blocks from the scene, said she was most concerned about the Precious Babies Learning Academy, a day care center close to the site of the shooting that she said had been locked down by police. She said her niece was in the building. She said that she didn’t know how many children were inside but that the center covered three floors.
Philadelphia’s Police Department recorded 203 homicides this year as of Tuesday. In 2018, there were 353 homicides in the city, the highest rate recorded there since 2007.
The crime rate in the city decreased 3% from 2016 to 2017, and the violent crime rate decreased 6.2% from 2016 to 2017, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.