Innocent mother killed in Grays Ferry shootout

A double shooting in Grays Ferry Friday night left neighbors outraged over the death of an innocent bystander, and wondering how to keep themselves and their children out of harm's way.

"This sh-t is really getting out of hand on these streets. What can we do?" James Parker asked as he looked across Corlies Street to the stoop where a 45-year-old woman, whom neighbors identified as Clarice Douglas, was gunned down.

Neighbors said she was a bighearted woman who was always seen riding bikes or playing football with her children, or sipping coffee with her mother on the porch where her life came to an unexpected end.

A shoot-out between two men running along Corlies Street near Dickinson around 2:30 p.m. left the woman dead and one of the shooters, an unidentified 23-year-old man, in critical but stable condition at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Friday.

Douglas was shot in the head and was pronounced dead at 3:32 p.m. said Officer Tanya Little, a police department spokeswoman.

The man was shot four times in his left arm. Cops found a gun in a trash can around the corner from the scene on Dickinson Street.

Over a dozen yellow evidence markers snaked along Corlies Street from Tasker to Dickinson, and police on the scene told neighbors to be careful not to kick them over as they came and went from their homes on the block.

Police left the scene around 7:30 p.m. and neighbors gathered on each other's stoops to talk and console each other while children looked on.

Parker said his daughter and grandchildren were supposed to visit him Friday night, but returning home from work to find yellow crime scene tape and a cluster of evidence markers in front of his house made him reconsider.

"It's everywhere you go," he said, "You can't run away from it."

A solid description of the second suspect was not immediately available, and police were unsure what the circumstances were that led to the shooting.

Tipsters are asked to call the Homicide Unit at 215-686-3334.

Contact Phillip Lucas at 215-854-5914 or lucasp@phillynews.com, or follow on Twitter @UnPhiltered. Read his blog at www.phillyconfidential.com.