‘A rough morning’ for alleged gang members: DA announces sweeping indictments against 21 men
The men are accused in 24 crimes, prosecutors said, including one homicide and 18 non-fatal shootings.
Prosecutors on Thursday announced indictments against 21 men they say fueled a cycle of retaliatory gun violence that for years spilled across neighborhoods in South and Northwest Philadelphia, leaving dozens of people shot and communities on edge.
The men are affiliated with rival groups: the Senders, Close Range Gang, and Klapperz in South Philadelphia, and PNB in Northwest Philadelphia, prosecutors say — crews that they say have traded gunfire in an escalating feud marked by brazen shootings on residential blocks and busy streets.
The indictments link the defendants to 24 crimes in recent years, including 18 nonfatal shootings, three carjackings, and one killing: the 2023 death of 18-year-old Aquill Foster, who was shot while riding in the passenger seat of his brother’s car on the 600 block of Ritner Street, according to police.
The investigation was led by the district attorney’s gun violence task force.
“It’s been a rough morning for those who choose to pick up guns and shoot at citizens of Philadelphia,” Bill Fritze, an assistant district attorney who oversees the unit, said at a news conference Thursday.
The charges represent the latest phase in a sweeping effort to dismantle the groups. About a year ago, prosecutors announced cases against a dozen members of the same South Philadelphia crews, accusing them of shooting more than 20 people. One teenager, they said, had shot at least 16 people.
Many of the defendants charged on Thursday had already been arrested in that earlier phase. Prosecutors said continued analysis of ballistic and digital evidence tied those individuals to additional shootings and also identified new participants in the violence.
The men range in age from 18 to 35, said Assistant District Attorney Adam Farraye, a member of the task force.
The crimes at the center of the latest indictments stretch across the city, prosecutors said, with clusters in South Philadelphia and parts of Northwest Philadelphia where the rival groups operated. At the news conference, prosecutors cast photographs of crime scenes onto a screen — darkened blocks dotted with yellow evidence markers, sometimes dozens of them, each one marking where police had recovered a spent shell casing.
Officials also credited the investigation with helping drive down gun violence. Since the task force began focusing on the groups in 2023, shootings and homicides in Philadelphia have been cut roughly in half, Farraye said.
Citywide, the number of nonfatal shootings has also declined. As of Wednesday, Philadelphia had recorded 323 aggravated assaults with a gun, down from 447 at the same time last year, according to police data. Twenty people had been killed in homicides so far this year.
Prosecutors said the feud among the groups dates to at least 2021, but intensified after the 2022 killing of 16-year-old Mehki Ingram, a member of the Senders. His death set off a cascade of retaliatory shootings across neighborhoods, authorities said.
District Attorney Larry Krasner said the task force’s strategy — building complex cases over time — is aimed at dismantling entire networks, not just arresting individual shooters.
The unit is taking apart criminal organizations “in big chunks,” he said, “and sometimes completely.”
Their work, Krasner said, makes it “easier for kids to play in the streets and grandparents to sit on their porches, and that is a very, very encouraging thing.”