Man accused of hit-and-run at Penn Presbyterian that injured four, including three nurses, found not guilty
Jaadir Goodwyn had been accused of striking three nurses, ages 36, 37, and 51, with an SUV.
A Philadelphia man who police said struck four people — including three nurses — with a car outside Penn Presbyterian Medical Center last year before fleeing has been cleared of criminal charges in connection with the incident.
Jaadir Goodwyn, 21, had all but one of the charges he faced dropped earlier this year and was found not guilty of the remaining one — evading arrest — at a bench trial on Monday.
In February, Common Pleas Court Judge Zachary C. Shaffer tossed out 28 other charges prosecutors filed against Goodwyn, court records show.
Goodwyn felt vindicated by the outcome of the case, but suffered damage to his reputation when he was unfairly accused of criminal conduct, said his attorney, Michael Coard. Coard pointed to a news conference at which police officials, joined by Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, publicly named Goodwyn as a suspect.
“My client feels vindicated in the court of the law, but still feels humiliated in the court of public opinion,” he said.
Early on the morning of Oct. 12, police said, Goodwyn and two other men got out of a Jeep Cherokee and went inside the hospital’s emergency department to ask for help for a man who had been shot. The men then jumped back into the car and sped from the hospital, driving right into the three nurses as well as the man they had dropped off, police said.
The nurses who were injured, all men, were ages 36, 37, and 51.
Goodwyn turned himself in to police days after the incident.
As investigators looked into the crime, they learned that Goodwyn drove the Jeep, which Coard said had been rented by his mother, to the hospital but was not driving when the nurses were struck, said Dustin Slaughter, spokesperson for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.
Goodwyn, Slaughter said, was merely a passenger when another man, Samir Murphy, drove the SUV into the nurses.
Murphy, 21, who is charged with multiple counts of aggravated assault, simple assault, and related crimes, is scheduled for a trial in September.