Grays Ferry gun battle leaves bystander dead

A double shooting Friday afternoon in Grays Ferry 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 . . . is really getting out of hand on these streets. What can we do?" James Parker asked as he looked across Corlies Street to the spot 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 shootout 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 Friday night at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

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

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

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

Police left the scene around 7:30 p.m., and neighbors gathered to talk and console one another while children looked on.

Parker said that his daughter and grandchildren were supposed to visit him Friday night, but that when he returned home from work and found yellow crime-scene tape and a cluster of evidence markers in front of his house, he reconsidered.

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

A solid description of the second gunman was not immediately available, and police said they were unsure what led to the shooting.

Police asked anyone with information to call the Homicide Unit at 215-686-3334.