Skip to content
Crime & Justice
Link copied to clipboard

A hellish night in Philly

The eight hours between 5 p.m. last night and 6 a.m. this morning were hellish ones for Philadelphia.

This post has been updated.

The eight hours between 10 p.m. last night and 6 a.m. this morning were hellish ones for Philadelphia.

A bus driver was assaulted. Three men were shot - two fatally. Two women were stabbed - one fatally. A 4-year-old girl was found wandering alone. And two boys, ages 14 and 17, sexually assaulted a woman under the Betsy Ross Bridge, according to police.

All I could think of when I got the run down from police this morning was: Dear God.

The mayhem began around 10:30 p.m., when two men who had just exited the trolley on Media Street near Conestoga in West Philly were held up by two other men. One of the victims had a handgun of his own and the victim and robbers exchanged gunfire. Both of the robbers were shot. One was later pronounced dead and the other remains in stable condition. One of the victims, who was also shot, was pronounced dead early this morning, police said. The other victim survived the incident.

At 11:38 p.m., a 19-year-old woman was accosted by two children, ages 14 and 17, who dragged her under the Betsy Ross Bridge in Port Richmond and sexually assaulted her. Both boys were apprehended and remain in police custody.

Around 1:20 a.m., a Route 54 bus driver who was stopped at Broad Street near Lehigh Avenue in North Philadelphia was assaulted by two men who fled the scene and remain unidentified. A SEPTA spokesman did not know what, if anything, provoked the attack. The spokesman said the driver was assaulted in his upper body and taken to Temple University Hospital, where he was treated and released.

At 3:12 a.m. this morning, a Route 56 SEPTA bus driver found a 4-year-old little girl alone near the intersection of Torresdale and Magee avenues. He put her on his bus and called SEPTA dispatch and Philadelphia police, who were able to find the girl's mother. The child was taken to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children for evaluation and was reunited with her mother, police said.

The unrelenting crime continued through this morning, when around 6 a.m. police were called to Reynolds Street near Richmond where they found

» READ MORE: two women stabbed

inside a house and a teenager with cuts on his hand.

According to police, a woman in her 50s who was found with multiple stab wounds in the house was pronounced dead by medics at 6:27 a.m. A 74-year-old woman who had suffered multiple stab wounds in the home was transported to Aria Health's Torresdale campus, where she remains in critical condition, police said.

The 18-year-old boy who was also in the home and had cut wounds to his hands told police that he and the two women were victims of a home invasion, but he could not provide detailed information on the suspects, police said.

If you have any information on any of these cases, please call the police department's tip line at 215-686-8477.

And if you have any belief in the power of prayer, please pray for a better night in our city today.