Drug dealer, friend gunned down in North Phila.

Two gunmen intent on assassinating a well-known drug dealer doing business in an open-air market along SEPTA tracks in North Philadelphia let loose with a hail of bullets yesterday afternoon that left two men dead and merchants and their customers scrambling for their lives.

Police said the drug dealer had been recently released from prison and was so familiar locally that one of the first narcotics officers on the scene recognized him immediately after walking up to the body shortly after noon.

"Everybody knows him," said a commander at the scene, adding that the man appeared to have been the primary target. "He's a well-known drug dealer."

The other victim was a friend of the drug dealer's who had been standing nearby when two gunmen approached and one of them pulled out an assault rifle, firing at least 15 shots.

The victims dropped immediately and were declared dead at the scene. Police were still trying to determine whether the friend had been a target as well.

Officially, the victims' names were not released because their families had not yet been contacted. Both men were from the neighborhood and were in their 40s.

The man police who said was targeted was also a suspect in killings in the area, and authorities said yesterday's slayings might have been retaliation.

The crime scene was on West Indiana Avenue near Mutter Street, where casual merchants do a brisk business selling a variety of mostly secondhand goods: furniture, mattresses, appliances and the like.

It's also, authorities said, an area where drug dealers and users blend among those hawking goods, and where they can use the rail line to quickly escape police.

The open-air market, though apparently not legal, has been there for decades and attracts many shoppers, dozens of whom gathered yesterday to watch police investigate.

Police said the intersection was controlled by one of the victims, who ran one of the stalls and oversaw a lucrative drug trade.

Homicide Capt. James Clark confirmed that one of the victims was among those selling street goods. He would not release details of the investigation but said detectives were looking closely at all drug connections.

After the shooting, the gunmen, who wore dark hooded sweatshirts and khaki pants, took off down a hill behind the graffiti-marked garages and along the tracks. Police found a hoodie that one of them might have discarded, but there was no sign of the high-velocity rifle used in the killings.

"When someone uses that kind of firepower out on the streets of the city, especially during the daytime when there's a lot of people out here, as you can see, it's very concerning to the police," Clark said. "And we take it very, very seriously."

Benito Rodriguez, 66, sells furniture on the street and heard the gunshots.

"Boom, boom, boom. Everybody heard it," Rodriguez said.

There were so many shots that Pedro Porra, 50, also selling furniture nearby, said "it sounded like a fiesta" with partyers celebrating with gunfire.

They were not surprised, they said, to hear that two men were killed and said that last week a man had been found dead, shot in the back, not far away.

Both men closed their businesses, as did most others yesterday.

Police filled a three-block corridor where a command post had been set up, and high-ranking officials, including Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, converged on the scene.

Residents said drugs were rampant. One couple said they rushed home from work to make sure their children, who attend a nearby elementary school, were OK. Although the streets were crowded at the time of the shooting, not many children were out, neighbors said.

Some people expressed sadness at the amount of crime in the neighborhood.

"I don't know what's happening with people," Porra said. "They're killing for nothing."

One teenager, who arrived at the scene hours after the shootings, said: "We're going to find who did it and get him."