A violent day: Shootings, bridge leap

Saturday was another violent day in Philadelphia:

* At 9:15 a.m., after four hours of negotiations, an alleged three-time bank robber jumped to his death from the Platt Bridge in South Philadelphia.

* At 7:52 p.m., a North Philadelphia man was fatally shot twice in the torso and once in the back, before his killer fled.

* At 9:59 p.m., a career criminal with 13 prior arrests was shot in the shoulder, trying to grab a patrolman's gun while fighting with him in Frankford.

In the most recent incident, Lt. Frank Vanore said, two patrolmen from the 15th District, headquartered at Harbison Avenue and Levick Street, responded to a police radio flash that a man with a gun was on Cloud Street near Church, in Frankford.

A witness described the gunman to police. The officers found the man, later identified as Hakim R. Johnson, 29, in the rear of Church Street near Cloud.

When an officer approached him, Johnson punched the cop in the face and tried to flee. The cop then grabbed Johnson and a struggle ensued, Vanore said.

During the fight, the officer took his gun out of the holster. Johnson tried to grab it, but the patrolman fired a shot, hitting Johnson in the left shoulder, Vanore said.

Johnson tried to strike the officer, but was subdued by backup officers who arrested him, Vanore said.

Vanore said that police retrieved a .32-caliber handgun with five live rounds and several packets of what appeared to be heroin from Johnson.

Johnson, of 8th Street near Lindley, was charged with aggravated assault, weapons and drug violations. He was taken to Aria Health, formerly Frankford Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition.

Released earlier this year from state prison, Johnson has been arrested twice for attempted murder, five times for narcotics violations, three times for thefts, once for aggravated assault and twice after he failed to appear in court.

The officer, who fired his weapon, was taken off street duty while the Internal Affairs Division investigates the discharge of his weapon.

In an incident earlier Saturday, Brian Way, 37, of Bouvier Street near Huntingdon, North Philadelphia, was shot twice in the torso and once in the back on 18th Street near Huntingdon at 7:52 p.m.

The critically wounded Way was rushed to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:10 p.m. Way's killer ran south on 18th Street into a home on the next block, which police searched but could not find the gunman.

Earlier, at 4:45 a.m., an alleged three-time bank robber and carjacker was driving a stolen brown Subaru Outback at a high rate of speed and ignoring traffic signals when he went up the George C. Platt Memorial Bridge and hit a guardrail, Vanore said.

The driver, Michael Dixon, 29, of Williamstown, Gloucester County, jumped out of the car and stood on a ledge on the westbound side of the bridge, looking down 20 feet to the Schuylkill.

For more than four hours, negotiators from the South Detective Division tried to talk Dixon off the ledge, as members of the Department of Homeland Security, crime-scene investigators, a medic unit and the police marine unit stood by.

At 9:15 a.m., Dixon jumped from the bridge. The marine unit retrieved him from the river, and he was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was pronounced dead at 9:27 a.m.

Vanore said that Dixon was wanted by the FBI in three bank robberies: in November, in Deptford Township, Gloucester County; June 1 at a TD Bank on the Black Horse Pike, in Bellmawr, Camden County; and, most recently, on Thursday at a Sovereign Bank, in Bensalem, Bucks County.

Police in Sewell, Gloucester County, also had issued an arrest warrant for Dixon in the carjacking of the 2008 Subaru Outback that he had been driving.