Comment on this story
Comment
Authorities are searching for seven teenagers accused of fatally beating a 73-year-old man with a traffic cone last month in Philadelphia, police said late this week.
Officials with the Philadelphia Police Department said Saturday that four teenage boys and three teenage girls attacked James Lambert in the early morning hours of June 24 on Cecil B. Moore Avenue in North Philadelphia. The teenagers hit him several times with “objects”, knocking him to the ground and causing injuries to his head, police said.
Surveillance video released by police shows a group of teenagers chasing the victim and aiming what appears to be a cone at him. The footage shows a teenager chasing him across the street and hitting him with the cone. Immediately after, another teenager is seen picking him up and hitting him again, before chasing him down the sidewalk and hitting him with it a third time.
Police said Lambert, who is blurred out in the video, was taken to a hospital where he died the next day from his injuries.
Attempts to reach Lambert’s relatives Saturday were unsuccessful.
The white prosecutor, the black ex-mayor and a heated debate about crime
It is unclear what happened in the moments before the attack and whether the teenagers knew the victim. But about 20 minutes later, the teenagers could be seen on surveillance video driving around the area, one of them riding a scooter.
Relatives of the victim told WCAU in Philadelphia that they saw Lambert, also known as “Simmy,” hours before the incident and couldn’t believe children attacked him. Police said the black teenagers appeared to be young or middle-aged. Police did not provide any additional descriptions, other than one teenager had blond hair.
Family members told the news station they were heartbroken.
As of July 8, there had been 280 homicides in Philadelphia in 2022, a 4 percent decrease from the same period last year, according to crime statistics from the Philadelphia Police Department.
More people were killed in Philadelphia in 2021 than any other year in recent history. It sparked a bitter debate over police and criminal justice between two well-known Philadelphia Democrats — District Attorney Larry Krasner, who is white, and former Mayor Michael Nutter, who is black.
As Washington Post reporter Cleve R. Watson Jr. reported at the time:
2021 in the City of Brotherly Love will always be marked by the shocking number of people whose lives ended suddenly and violently: an 18-year-old shot two weeks before graduation, two men killed in a hail of gunfire at a July 4 cookout, a pregnant woman was shot while unwrapping gifts from a baby shower.
Police said a $20,000 reward is being offered for any information leading to an arrest and conviction in the June 24 attack. The case is being investigated by the Homicide Unit, the police said.
Add Comment