Skip to content
Crime & Justice
Link copied to clipboard

Out for the season

Former Vaux High basketball star Rysheed Jordan's trial is delayed until Dec. 6 after his lawyer quits because he was not paid.

Fifteen months after his arrest in a North Philadelphia robbery and shooting, Rysheed Jordan is unlikely to play basketball anywhere soon except a prison gym.

Jordan, 23, named player of the year in 2013 as a Vaux High School senior and leading scorer in his sophomore year at St. John's University in New York, was to have gone on trial Wednesday in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.

That was until defense attorney Qawi Abdul Rahman told Judge Roxanne Covington he wanted off the case. He hadn't been paid, said Rahman, the second lawyer to depart from the aspiring NBA player's defense.

With Jordan in prison on $900,000 bail and his family apparently unable to hire a lawyer, Covington looked around the courtroom and appeared to pick the first lawyers she saw in the gallery.

Jordan's new lawyer is Matthew F. Sullivan, a Center City criminal defense attorney, who agreed to accept a court appointment to defend Jordan.

The lanky 6-foot-4 point guard was led into court where he shook hands with Sullivan and sat down long enough to learn his trial begins Dec. 6.

As in his previous court appearances, Jordan's mother, Amina Robinson, and about a dozen relatives and supporters attended the hearing.

Assistant District Attorney Matthew Krouse urged Covington not to permit any more delays in the trial. In December, Rahman had filed an unsuccessful speedy trial motion asking for Jordan to be released on house arrest pending trial.

The May 27, 2016 shooting occurred at 4:15 p.m. when two men parked outside the Athletic Recreation Center at 1400 N. 26th St. and got out of the car to buy marijuana.

Jordan and two other men who have never been identified allegedly approached the pair and ordered them to turn over their money.

When the alleged buyers ran to their car, police said, the three gunmen fired six rounds, hitting one man twice in the arm.

Prosecutors said security video shows Jordan running into the rec center and that Jordan later admitted hiding the gun in a 13-year-old's book bag and walking the teen home before retrieving the weapon.

Jordan was arrested June 1, 2016 after he allegedly bolted from a car in which he was riding after police stopped the driver for running a red light at Broad and Norris Streets in North Philadelphia. Police chased Jordan on foot and alleged caught him in a dead-end alley where he tossed a .45-caliber pistol.