Police: Man gunned down on quiet street

PASS THROUGH Dedaker Drive, a quiet, tree-lined street in Bustleton, and you're likely to see kids playing and neighbors chatting.

A man getting gunned down in cold blood is a somewhat less common sight.

"I grew up in Olney; I came from stuff like this," Rob Coffee, 38, said yesterday as he cleaned up the last remnants of crime-scene tape in his front yard, left behind from an early-morning assassination-style murder on the block.

"I never expected to see this up here," he said.

Coffee's expectations, like so many of his neighbors', were shattered early yesterday, when police say a 35-year-old man was shot dead feet from his front door.

As the investigation into the shooting continued last night, a police source confirmed that the victim was believed to be Shafeeq Green, whom property records listed as the current resident of the address where the shooting occurred.

Green was shot once in both the hand and chest about 6:30 a.m. by three men who accosted him, according to police. He was taken to Aria Health's Torresdale hospital, where he was pronounced dead just before 9 a.m.

There was no official word on a motive last night, but neighbors said the small army of police officers that swarmed their block yesterday told them that Green was targeted - allegedly for being a high-level distributor in a drug-trafficking ring.

Court records show that Green appeared at a drug forfeiture hearing in August 2011 and that he was arrested in May of the same year for drug manufacturing, delivery or possession with intent to deliver - but the charge was withdrawn in October that year.

All Natalie, a neighbor on the block who wished to only be identified by her first name, knows is what she saw. And, since she lives kitty-corner to Green's house, that was quite a lot.

After a gunshot woke her early yesterday, she rushed outside in time to see a blood-covered Green stumble across the street, screaming for help. He collapsed onto the porch of the house across from hers, where blood still marked the pavement last night.

"It's unbelievable," she said. "You hear about this on the news all the time, but it's another thing entirely to see it in real life."

Natalie, who was the first to notify police of the shooting, said she didn't know Green or his live-in girlfriend - whom she said was distraught and "beside herself" in the street yesterday after police arrived - very well. The couple moved into the property about a year ago and generally kept to themselves, she said.

"I don't know how to react. I'm still trying to take this all in," she said. "How can you feel safe when something like this happens across the street?"

But Michelle, who lives two doors down from Natalie and also declined to provide her last name, said her attitude toward the neighborhood hasn't changed.

"It seems to me like this guy brought it upon himself," she said. "When you get involved in these kind of things, this is bound to happen.

"The rest of us are safe, law-abiding families," she added. "We have nothing to worry about."