Neighbors: Woman shot dead in West Philly house had gone there to pay respects after another woman was slain
Two woman were killed two blocks apart and hours apart -- one while paying her respects to the family of the other, neighbors said.
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The tidiness of the 100 block of Dewey Street in West Philadelphia belied the violence Thursday that claimed the lives of a resident shot dead two blocks away and her friend, who was fatally shot hours later when she went to the dead woman’s home to pay respects.
The 46-year-old woman who lived on Dewey was killed shortly after 7 a.m. in the 100 block of West Millick Street, police said. She was shot once in the head while standing next to a parked car. Neighbors said the woman they called “T” lived with her husband, an adult daughter, and three grandchildren.
At 4:20 p.m., as family and friends gathered in the woman’s home, gunfire erupted and a 36-year-old woman was shot twice in the abdomen and once in the left arm, police said. Neighbors said police officers approached the house with their guns drawn, and emerged carrying the woman from the house and placed her in a police car. She was pronounced dead an hour later at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, authorities said.
A Philadelphia police spokesperson said homicide detectives were working to determine if the two slayings were linked and were not yet ready to release the victims’ names.
“That’s crazy as hell. Just wild,” William Whiting, who lives across Dewey from the second shooting scene, said of the back-to-back slayings. He said “T” and her husband often argued.
Whiting said he did not know the woman who was shot in the house. He said the sequence of events was stunning.
“Somebody gets shot on Millick Street, then somebody gets shot around here, then come to find out the person who got shot on Millick lived across the street, then the person who came over with friends and family gets shot,” Whiting said, shaking his head.
A woman who identified herself as the block captain for the 100 block of Dewey said the arguments between “T” and her husband were so loud and happened so often that many on the block had complained to her.
“They just had the cops here the other day. The cops said, ‘We’re tired of coming here,’” said the block captain, who declined to give her name. “No one should die like that.”
“I’ve never seen nothing like this in 20 years living here,” another neighbor, Charlet Baylor, said while sitting on her porch. “This is a quiet block.”