A former West Philly High School student was found not guilty on Wednesday of the murder of a classmate near the 46th Street El stop in January 2015.

Xavier Beemon, who was 14 at the time, admitted to stabbing Nafis O’Neal, also 14, with a pocketknife during an after-school altercation, but said it was self defense. A jury agreed and after seven hours of deliberation acquitted Beemon on all charges, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

Beemon was considerably smaller than O’Neal, who was a popular basketball and football player, according to testimony. Beemon, who moved to West Philly from Alabama in 2011, said he was so fearful of life in Philadelphia that he began hiding a pocketknife near school that he would carry home for protection. O’Neal approached Beemon after school and a scuffle ensued. Beemon said he swung the knife around and stabbed O’Neal once in the chest.

O’Neal was pronounced dead at the scene.

“I didn’t aim at his chest,” The Inquirer reported Beemon saying during testimony. “I just swung and it happened I hit his chest.”

The School Reform Commission on Wednesday approved a new charter school to be located in the Parkside neighborhood in West Philadelphia. KIPP Parkside is scheduled to open during the 2019-2020 academic year with grades K-4.

The school’s opening was one of the stipulations the SRC placed on the approval. The school’s application proposed opening in the 2018-2019 school year. The SRC also limited the school to grades K-4, adding that it could expand to the proposed K-8 if it performed well.

KIPP Parkside garnered unanimous approval from the SRC, which denied the applications of two other schools – the Friendship Whittier Charter School in the West Allegheny neighborhood and the Deep Roots Charter School in Harrowgate. Only three proposals made it through the full process this year. The evaluation reports for all three proposed schools are available here.

About a third of Philadelphia’s approximately 130,000 public school students attend charter schools, second only to Detroit among big cities.

A 35-year-old man died after being shot outside of a bar at 46th and Walnut, according to police. The man was found unresponsive with a gunshot wound shortly before 2 a.m. on Monday in South Philadelphia. His friends drove him to a relative’s home while he was still alive not realizing he had been shot, according to a report by 6ABC News. The victim was taken to Presbyterian Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 2:10 a.m. Police believe the man was shot somewhere near the bar at 46th and Walnut.

So far there have been no arrests and there are no suspects. The investigation continues.

Unfortunately, this was the third shooting in the area in less than a week. One resulted in another fatality.

A 38-year-old man was shot on the 5100 block of Irving Street on Tuesday, Jan. 17. He was found unresponsive on the sidewalk at about 6:30 p.m. by two police officers who were in the area and heard the gunshots. The victim was shot twice, in the head and neck. He was transported to Penn-Presbyterian medical Center by police and was listed in extremely critical condition. He died of his wounds on Wednesday, according to reports.  Continue Reading

UPDATE (Thursday, Jan. 19): A suspect was detained Tuesday near 40th and Walnut, according to police. At approximately 11 a.m., one of the robbery victims observed a male in the area who he recognized as the male who had robbed him earlier that morning. He called 911, and the male was stopped by responding officers and positively identified by the victim. The male was later identified as 56-year-old Larry Brown. He was arrested and charged with robbery, terroristic threats and related offenses.

Police are investigating a series of gunpoint robberies that took place between 8:30 p.m. on Monday and 7:05 a.m. on Tuesday between 43rd and 47th Streets and Spruce St. and Cedar Ave. A total of four robberies were reported, and police believe they were committed by the same suspect, described as a black male, about 5 feet, 6 inches, with a thin build and a beard, wearing a maroon hooded sweatshirt, shorts, and spandex tights.

The first robbery took place in Garden Court at about 8:30 p.m. on Monday when a 38-year-old woman was approached by an unknown male on Pine St. between 46th and 47th. The man showed the woman a gun and demanded her purse which contained her cell phone, debit/credit cards, checkbook and cash. The man also indecently assaulted the woman before fleeing in an unknown direction, according to a police report.

UPDATE (1/17/2017): Police have recovered surveillance video from inside the store. The video shows an unknown black male wearing a green hooded jacket entering the store, pulling out a handgun and directing the victim, 16-year-old Sean D-Jones, to the floor. After several minutes talking on a cell phone, with Jones still on the floor, the suspect shot him one time in the head, according to a police report. After shooting Jones, the suspect calmly walked out of the building and headed north on N. 52nd Street towards Haverford Ave. The victim’s father was in the back of the storefront residence during the shooting. He heard a “thump” and minutes later discovered his son bleeding on the floor, according to the report.

Police are searching for the gunman who shot and killed a 16-year-old youth on Sunday afternoon in West Philadelphia.

The victim, identified as Sean-D Jones, was inside his father’s store, Gary Global Links Video Productions, located on the 200 block of N. 52nd Street, when someone entered the store and shot him once in the head shortly after 12 p.m., according to police. The teen was critically injured and died at a local hospital a short time later, according to reports. So far no arrests have been made.

Jones and his older brother recently immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica, according to reports. 6ABC spoke to Jones’ brother, Shaquille Jones.

The City of Philadelphia will pay $4.4 million to Philippe Holland, the pizza delivery driver who was shot several times in April 2014 in the Cedar Park neighborhood by two police officers who thought he was involved in a shooting.

         Philippe Holland

The settlement is the largest in the city’s history for a victim of a police shooting, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“We will strive to ensure that tragedies such as this do not happen again in our City. The Philadelphia Police Department has agreed under the settlement to implement a new training protocol for all current and new plainclothes police officers,” City Solicitor Sozi Pedro Tulante said in a statement released today by the Mayor’s Office.

Holland had just delivered a pizza to a home near 51st and Willows at about 10 p.m. on April 22, 2014 when two plain-clothes officers, Mitchell Farrell and Kevin Hanvey, approached him with their guns drawn. Farrell and Hanvey were investigating a shooting in the area. Fearing a robbery, Holland ran to his car and tried to drive away. The officers opened fire, hitting Holland in the neck, head and leg while he was behind the wheel. Police regulations prohibit shooting at a moving vehicle.  Continue Reading