South Philly shooting may be retaliation

They heard the shots, a barrage of them, each sounding like an old junker backfiring in a tunnel.

When the gunshots finally stopped, at about noon yesterday, people on McClellan Street in South Philly hesistantly looked through windows and spotted Jeffery Hardee sprawled on the ground in front of a corner variety store on 9th Street.

Cops said that the 21-year-old had been shot six times; a few of the bullets hit him in the face and eyes. He was pronounced dead at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

"I went over with some other neighbors," said one resident, who didn't want her name used. "It looked like he had toppled over on his bike. He still had one foot on his bicycle. There was blood everywhere, and I just started to cry."

Hardee's slaying came just a day after Rahfee Yates, 20, was gunned down a few blocks away at 6th and Mifflin streets.

News reports - and neighborhood rumors - suggested that Hardee had been killed because he witnessed Yates' slaying.

Police aren't so sure. Homicide Lt. Mel Williams said that Hardee, of Lawrence Street near Tasker, was taken to Police Headquarters for questioning Wednesday after a cop spotted him not too far from the spot where Yates was killed.

It was unclear if Hardee had claimed to have been a witness. Williams said that investigators believe that Hardee and Yates knew each other from a prior encounter.

Both men were no strangers to the law. Yates, of Dudley Street near 7th, had 12 arrests and was scheduled to go to trial on Sept. 19 to face a host of charges, including aggravated assault and conspiracy to commit murder, court records show.

Hardee was due to appear in court on May 6, records show, to face drug and weapons charges.