Gunman in Kingsessing mass shooting killed one of his victims nearly two days before the others, police say

One of the five people police identified as victims of the mass shooting in Kingsessing on July 3 was actually killed nearly two days earlier, law enforcement officials said Sunday.

Joseph Wamah Jr., 31, was killed on July 2, authorities said, 44 hours before Kimbrady Carriker began a shooting spree that took four more lives.

That revelation marks a significant change to the timeline of the city’s deadliest act of gun violence in decades. And it raises new questions about Carriker’s alleged actions, including how he was able to commit the first crime without being apprehended, and why he then went back to the same streets the next evening.

Police said in their statement that they responded to a 911 call for reports of gunfire on Wamah’s block on July 2. But officers were dispatched to the wrong address — the 1600 block of North 56th Street, not South 56th Street — and did not see any evidence of gunfire, police said.

The mass shooting began around 8:30 p.m. July 3 and traced along South 56th Street near Chester and Springfield Avenues in the Kingsessing section in Southwest Philadelphia. Police say Carriker opened fire on occupied cars and passersby while dressed in body armor, wearing a ski mask, and armed with an automatic rifle and a ghost gun.

Seven people were shot across several blocks. Police officers rushed them to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, but five people died: Da’Juan Brown, 15; Lashyd Merritt, 20; Ralph Moralis, 59; Dymir Stanton, 29; and Wamah.

Two boys, ages 2 and 13, were shot in the legs but survived.

It was the deadliest shooting in Philadelphia in more than two decades. Carriker was arrested on the 1600 block of South Frazier Street when responding officers caught up with him.

Police said from the outset that Wamah, who lived on the 1600 block of South 56th Street, was Carriker’s first victim. On Sunday, however, they said Carriker killed Wamah nearly two days before the rampage. Authorities said Carriker appeared to have killed his victims at random. Sunday’s release gave no details as to why Carriker allegedly killed Wamah.

Police said they responded to a report of gunshots about 2 a.m. July 2, about 90 minutes after authorities believe Wamah was killed. Officers said they surveyed the block and neighbors without finding anything — because they were sent to the wrong address.

Wamah’s neighbors, Zahirah Muhammad and Keisha Carter, said in an interview that they were awakened by the sound of gunshots about 12:30 a.m. July 2. The gunfire was so loud, Muhammad remembers thinking that it sounded as if the shooter might have been in her living room.

But the two soon realized the shots were coming from a house nearby, where Wamah lived alone with his father.

The two said police were called, but never came. Carter said she later had a panic attack and went to a local hospital. She was terrified, she said, that something would happen to her children.

Within 44 hours, Carter and Muhammad said, they were once again shaken by the sound of gunfire the night before Independence Day.

Ring camera video from their home captured the sound of at least 14 shots that rang out on July 3.

Hours after the gunfire subsided and the shooter was caught, Muhammad and Carter said, Wamah’s father returned home and found his son with gunshot wounds.

They remember his cries of anguish and his refusal to leave his son’s side, even as he was loaded into an ambulance, Carter said. The two stayed up until 5 a.m. Tuesday, July 4, to try to help and console relatives who came to the Wamah house, they said.

Joseph Wamah Jr. was a polite and quiet man who mostly kept to himself, said Muhammad, who has lived nearby for three years. Sometimes, he would sit on Muhammad’s front stoop to smoke, she said.

The days since have left the two in a haze of fear and anxiety.

“I’m scared,” said Muhammad. “I’m looking every which way even though he’s caught.”

Carriker lived on the 5600 block of Belmar Terrace and had been acting erratically in the days before the shooting, witnesses told investigators.

Sources also said some of Carriker’s roommates told detectives they’d been trying to avoid him inside the house because of his perceived volatility — which included frequently shouting, invoking religion, and routinely wearing his bulletproof vest and holding firearms.

Carriker has been charged with five counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder, and related crimes. He is being detained without bail.

District Attorney Larry Krasner said in a statement Sunday that the investigation into the shooting is ongoing.

“As the DA’s Office and the Philadelphia Police Department made clear throughout last week, the investigation of this horrifying tragedy is active, ongoing, and will continue throughout the course of our prosecution of this defendant,” he said.