JOSEPH KACZMAREK
the naked city
Investigators remove a victim’s body from a home on the 2500 block of North Corlies Street on March 5. According to police, the 40-yearold man was found with a gunshot wound to the head.
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A decade of war in Philly’s deadliest neighborhood. BY DANIEL DENVIR
First of two parts. Next week: Can Philadelphia put an end to decades of murder?
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CONTINUED ON PG. 14
P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R | S E P T E M B E R 1 9 - S E P T E M B E R 2 5 , 2 0 1 3 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T | 13
THE PRICE OF REVENGE
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y son was shot twice in the head, right there,” says the middle-aged man standing at the corner of Stanley and Huntingdon, gesturing to a point a few blocks away. “Yeah, he made a full recovery. He’s just blind in one eye.” The motive for the shooting last October was “bullshit,” the man says. It’s a common explanation for the shootings that terrorize North Philly’s Strawberry Mansion neighborhood. “Excuse my expression. BS. That’s it.” A few feet away, Jahaira Torres stands next to her teal minivan and points out where a bullet burst through the windshield last March while a few of her children sat in the backseat, screaming. “I was sitting there waiting at the light,” Torres says. “It seems like they were fighting, and some trouble started. And I got hit with a bullet in my face.” Scars across the right side of her face are a reminder that the bullet was just wide of fatal. Landmarks of gun violence are everywhere in this neighborhood-turned-battlefield that comprises one of the most violent sections of one of America’s most murder-plagued major cities. Jobs are scarce. Illegally dumped garbage is