Police identify victim of South Phila. killing

One of the two Cambodian women stabbed to death in a South Philadelphia apartment had been in the city about two months, police said yesterday. She was identified as Nimol Tep, 40.

The name of her 47-year-old roommate has not been released because officials were still trying to notify her family.

Sambo Nou, 21, of the 400 block of Jackson Street, has been charged with murder and robbery in the double homicide. Police said Nou killed the women following an argument with the older victim over money. The woman and Nou's mother were friends, investigators said.

Lt. Philip Riehl of the Homicide Unit said both women worked as seamstresses. Tep arrived in the city about two months ago from Connecticut, he said. Riehl said she did not know how long she had been in the United States.

The women's bodies were discovered about 6 a.m. Thursday by an upstairs neighbor after they failed to answer the front door of their building to a van driver who came to pick them up for work. - Joseph A. Gambardello