By Barbara Boyer, Robert Moran and Joseph A. Slobodzian
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Related: Two more Philly officers shot — P1 News Report
Related tip: Never let looks deceive you
PHILADELPHIA — He is 16, has yet to attend school this year, lived in an unlicensed boarding house in Frankford, and in the last 12 months accumulated four conduct-related misdemeanor arrests.
Yesterday, Donyea Phillips was charged as an adult with multiple accounts of attempted murder, accused of shooting and wounding two plainclothes Philadelphia police officers as they broke down the front door to serve an arrest warrant.
Tuesday’s shootings stunned police and a public still recovering from the Oct. 31 killing of Officer Chuck Cassidy, shot to death as he walked into the armed robbery of a doughnut shop on North Broad Street in West Oak Lane.
The shootings - the fifth and sixth police officers shot on the job in the last two months — rekindled the still-smoldering anger from the Cassidy killing.
Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson said the two officers were shot with a stolen handgun — in this case, a Glock .357-caliber semiautomatic — as was Cassidy.
“We’re having a handgun problem here in the United States,” Johnson said, noting that in addition to the police shootings more than 350 people had been slain in Philadelphia this year. “It’s not just [disregard] for police. It’s human life - period.”
“We see that this violence is being perpetrated by younger and younger people,” Mayor Street said yesterday at a City Jobs Fair for Ex-Offenders at the Kingsessing Recreation Center. “We know there is a significant breakdown in the family structure in this country and these young people are not being taught the moral standards that they used to have, that the respect for authority is deteriorating dramatically.”
John McNesby, president of Philadelphia Lodge 5 of the Fraternal Order of Police, called on citizens to write their state legislators and “tell them that new handgun legislation, as well as stricter penalties for those shooting at police officers, is desperately needed.”
The legislature has been loath to pass stringent gun-control laws. Police and District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham have pushed for a bill limiting handgun purchases to one a month, and another requiring gun owners to immediately report to police when a gun is stolen.
The two wounded officers - undercover drug officers whose names were not disclosed — were treated at local hospitals and released. One was shot in a leg, the other in a hip.
The shootings brought scores of police into the neighborhood around the building at Orthodox and Josephine Streets. After a three-hour standoff, the occupants of the building surrendered without additional violence.
Authorities said another occupant of the building, Troy Zimmerman, 21, of the 6700 block of Woolston Avenue in West Oak Lane, was arrested on drug charges — a quantity of crack cocaine was found inside the building — but not charged in the wounding of the two officers.
Investigators questioned five other people taken into custody from the house; all were released without being charged, police said.
Police said the undercover officers made a controlled purchase of cocaine from the building at 1:45 p.m. Tuesday. They returned at 6:30 p.m. with a search warrant and a battering ram to take down the door.
The officers were in the process of hitting the door when shots came through a front window, hitting both officers.
Johnson said the two officers had police badges hanging from the necks when they knocked. When there was no answer, they began battering the door.
Police Chief Inspector William Blackburn said it was clear that the gunman aimed and fired at police through a window.
Johnson said that Phillips lived in the house and that the teen’s parents lived elsewhere.
Johnson also confirmed that during the standoff Phillips’ mother called police in an effort to save her son, telling police that Phillips had called her, admitted that he might have shot police, and asked her to telephone the department.
Philadelphia school officials confirmed that Phillips was listed as a student at Martin Luther King High School, on Stenton Avenue in East Germantown, though school records show he has not attended this year. His last attendance was last year in ninth grade at the school, officials said.
Neighbors said they knew nothing about the residents of the house or what went on there in a block marked by abandoned houses and vacant lots.
One man near the house yesterday, who would not give his name, said he used to live there. He said he got out of jail Tuesday and returned to find the neighborhood swarming with police. He said one current resident told him that “two young boys” were now squatting in the building.
At police facilities around the city yesterday, officers continued to mourn over Cassidy and to seethe at the latest attack on one of their own.
At FOP headquarters near Broad and Spring Garden Streets, police had a moment of silence at 3:45 p.m. yesterday, and the city police radio broadcast a bulletin that Cassidy’s badge number had been retired by the department.
Earlier in the day, Officer Mariano Santiago, shot in the shoulder last month, was leaving Police Headquarters and recalled his own brush with death.
“We just need to take over the streets,” said Santiago, his left arm still in a sling. “We just cannot let these guys take over.”
Copyright 2007 The Philadelphia Inquirer