Skip to content
News
Link copied to clipboard

Killing on SEPTA platform shocks commuters

The morning after a subway attack left a Center City Starbucks manager dead, the coffee shop was closed and commuters sounded concerned but helpless.

The morning after a subway attack left a Center City Starbucks manager dead, the coffee shop was closed and commuters sounded concerned but helpless.

"It's appalling," said Khalid Ali, 27. "I don't know what kind of monsters would brutally do that to a hard-working American."

"It makes me worried, especially because of the incidents on the Broad Street Line recently," said Christine McFadyen, 29, outside the darkened Starbucks. "They come up in gangs, stealing iPods and other things."

The victim, Sean Patrick Conroy, 36, died yesterday afternoon, less an hour after four youths attacked him on a platform of the westbound Market-Frankford El below 13th and Market Streets.

Conroy had just finished his shift a block away, at the Starbucks in the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 12th and Market Streets.

Taped to the shop's doors this morning, a statement explained it would be "closed temporarily" because "a longtime and well-respected Starbucks employee" had "passed away as a result of an incident."

McFadyen, who stops at the Starbucks five mornings a week for an apple fritter and a venti black, was surprised to see the lights off. "That was the manager? I heard it on the news, but I didn't make the connection."

Shortly after 2:30 yesterday afternoon, a SEPTA police sergeant on the eastbound side saw Conroy having a dispute with four juveniles, one of whom swung at Conroy, SEPTA Police Capt. Steven Harold said.

Before the officer could reach the other side, the youths had fled. Because Conroy was in "obvious distress," Harold said, the sergeant administered CPR until medics arrived.

Conroy, however, was pronounced dead at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital less an hour later.

Police have charged a 16-year-old Simon Gratz High student with murder and conspiracy and are searching for the other three youths.

"It's a horrible thing, a terrible thing," said financial planner David L. Johnson, 51. "It bothers me, but it doesn't scare me."

Johnson said he was attacked at Suburban Station when he first moved into the city in 1989 from Paoli.

"I was hurt, but not bad enough for medical attention," he said. "It made me angry. The guy came up and asked for directions. I didn't know better."

Jenny Reynolds, 27, said she she was "shocked" to hear the news, but had no alternative to taking SEPTA.

"I don't know the details of what happened," she said. "Violence happens all over the city. I can't not take public transportation."

Daniel Zimmerman, 15, a student at Academy at Palumbo, commutes from 65th Street each day.

The attack, he said, "makes me a little worried, but it won't affect my commute."