Five Shots

No one was quite sure who was the shooter and who was the target.

by Brian Howard

When I got to the intersection, there was already a crowd forming. A mountain bike lay in the middle of the crosswalk.

It was last Saturday, around 11 a.m.

I'd been at a friend's house watching live coverage of Alberto Contador locking up his second Tour de France victory in Stage 20 and was biking home when a police vehicle, siren blaring, flew past me on Morris Street. I turned the corner onto Ninth and saw the commotion at Fernon Street, the far end of the block where I bought my house last year.

Several police cars blocked the street, backed-up traffic began going the wrong way down Mountain, neighbors gathered on the corners, and the bike lay, its handlebars twisted awkwardly around, abandoned in the street.

My first thought was that one of the bicyclists who frequently ride the sidewalk in my neighborhood had been struck by a car. But the bike wasn't bent or disfigured. And there was no ambulance.

There'd been shots fired, the neighbors were saying as my girlfriend came walking up the street, concerned I'd maybe been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone said they thought they heard six pops. The police strung a crime scene line across each of the corners and combed the west side of the street and sidewalk for bullets.

My girlfriend, who'd been in our living room at the time, said she heard the shots but thought, or rather hoped, they'd been fireworks, until she saw a guy — "a boy, a kid actually" — sprint past our front window.

There had been a guy on foot and a guy on a bike. No one was quite sure who was the shooter and who was the target, but the idea of a bike-by shooting seemed to at least capture the fancy of the collected chatterers. It seemed that the shooter had missed his mark, or that if he hadn't, the target wasn't hit badly given that a) he also ran away, and b) didn't leave a blood trail.

It was odd, as we all stood there, sort of amazed and sort of befuddled. "The neighborhood is changing," said someone glumly. "Good thing grandma didn't pick this weekend to visit," laughed another.

One person said, "They weren't from this neighborhood," and another added, "It was probably drug-related." Both of which are thinly veiled code in this nameless neighborhood that's in the no-man's land between Passyunk Square to the west and the area some disparagingly call the Cell Block to the southeast.

Later, my backyard neighbor tells me her friend's husband was walking next to the guy on foot.

According to Detective Michael Ferry of South Detectives who is in charge of the investigation, there were five shots fired on the east side of the street. The shooter was on foot. The target was on the bike. Nobody got hurt. As far as the investigation goes, Ferry specified that without a perpetrator and without a victim, there's not a whole lot to go on. Can't really assign motive when you've got no one to ask questions.

I asked Detective Eric Johnson, also of South Detectives, whether midmorning weekend shootings were odd.

Time of day isn't really a factor, he told me. Incidents like the shooting on my block this weekend tend to be matters of "happenchance." Someone with a grudge runs into the person they've got beef with.

I guess I'd been watching too much of The Wire. Thought maybe there'd be a bulletin board with suspects (but if there were, I'm sure they wouldn't be telling me). But now the shell casings are in an evidence bag somewhere, and just the ends of the police tape remain tied to a fence. It's not funny but it sort of is how if you fire five shots on a summer Saturday morning and nobody's unlucky enough to get hit, it's almost like it didn't happen. Like you count your blessings and move on.

(bhoward@citypaper.net)