Two men wanted in fatal ambush of a bystander caught in the crossfire of a West Philly gang feud
Investigators believe Imani Ringgold, 20, was not the intended target of the shooting that took her life.
Two men are wanted in connection with the fatal ambush of a 20-year-old woman who police say was caught in the crossfire of a West Philadelphia gang feud she had nothing to do with.
Police are searching for Zaire Manning, 21, and Mustafa King, 26, to charge them with murder and related crimes in the killing of Imani Ringgold near 60th and Market Streets Tuesday evening.
Ringgold was on a break from work as a home health aide in the area — a job her family said she’d started just days earlier — and had picked up a slice of pizza on the block around 6:20 p.m., police said.
She was on the phone with her grandmother, walking past a group of young men standing in front of a deli, police said, when three gunmen jumped out of a dark-colored Mazda and started shooting.
After Ringgold fell to the ground, one of the gunmen stood over her and shot her multiple times, before fleeing. She died at Penn Presbyterian Hospital a short time later.
A 24-year-old man nearby was shot in the foot, and a 55-year-old woman was struck in the buttocks.
Investigators believe the gunmen had no reason to kill Ringgold, police said, and that she was a bystander caught in the crossfire.
Police are still working to identify two other people involved.
Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore said the detectives are looking into whether the shooters were targeting the men standing behind her, and whether the gunfire is in retaliation for a quintuple shooting that left two men dead a few blocks away last week.
Her killing was the latest in what law enforcement sources believe has become a heated dispute between the West Philadelphia crews known as Northside and Southside, a more than decade-old rivalry that has left that section of West Philadelphia under siege in recent weeks.
Eleven people have been shot within a few-block-radius of 60th and Market Streets since March 27.
This is a developing story and will be updated.