Two more men charged in Grays Ferry mass shooting
Jihad Gray and Dieve Drumgoole were charged Friday in connection to the mass shooting on the 1500 block of Etting Street last month.
Two men were charged Friday in connection with the mass shooting in Grays Ferry last month that left three people dead and 10 others wounded — the third and fourth suspects arrested in what officials say they hope will be among at least a dozen people charged in the coming months.
Jihad Gray, 35, was taken into custody Thursday morning at his South Philadelphia home after investigators said he fired multiple bullets down the 1500 block of South Etting Street during a block party July 7. Gray was charged Friday with three counts of murder, attempted murder, causing catastrophe, and related crimes.
Gray also faces drug and weapons charges after officers, during a search of his home, recovered a horde of narcotics and firearms, including an assault rifle and an old-fashioned revolver shotgun, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation.
Police on Friday also arrested Dieve Drumgoole and charged him with three counts of murder and related offenses, a police source said.
Drumgoole, the father of one of the shooting victims, allegedly threw a gun into the Schuylkill after the shooting, then reported it stolen to police after officials started making arrests, the police source said
Gray and Drumgoole are the latest people to be charged in the shooting, and officials said more arrests are to come after ballistic evidence showed that at least 13 people fired guns on the block that night. Daquan Brown, 21, and Terrell Frazier, 22, were arrested earlier this month. A fifth man, Christopher Battle, is on the run, police said.
Police said the men were among more than 100 people attending a block party on Etting Street — one of two that weekend on the block — in the early morning of July 7 when dozens of bullets were fired down the street.
Police first said that 12 people, ages 15 to 27, had been shot, but they have since found an additional victim — a 15-year-old girl — bringing the total to 13.
Three people were killed. Zahir Wylie, 23, of Overbrook, was struck in the chest, and Jason Reese, 19, of West Philadelphia, was shot in the head. Azir Harris, 27, who used a wheelchair after being paralyzed in an earlier shooting, was struck in the back.
Initially, police said they believed the party had been targeted, but after interviewing witnesses and reviewing video and ballistic evidence at the scene, detectives said they no longer believed that was the case.
Now, police say they believe that someone at the gathering shot once into the air or toward a car or person passing by. The sound then triggered half a dozen men, believing they were under fire, to pull out their weapons and spray more than 120 shots indiscriminately down the block.