PHILADELPHIA — A day before killing four people in a mass shooting in Philadelphia last week, authorities say the gunman went to his first victim’s door wearing a dark mask, shot through it and yelled that he was law enforcement before entering the home and continuing to shoot, police officials said at a news conference Monday.
The details were revealed a day after police announced that it was likely Joseph Wamah Jr., 31, had been killed in the early hours of July 2, and not during the larger July 3 attack, as police had initially thought, and that a 911 call reporting the gunshots had been misrouted to the wrong neighborhood.
Officials said they have not found a connection between Wamah and the suspected shooter, Kimbrady Carriker. Authorities believe Carriker, 40, fatally shot Wamah in the early hours of July 2 and then, about 44 hours later, opened fire randomly with an AR-15-style rifle, killing four others and wounding four more in a southwest Philadelphia neighborhood.
Wamah was killed in a row house on South 56th Street, but Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said Monday that officers were dispatched several miles away to North 56th Street instead. Upon not finding any evidence of a shooting there, Outlaw said the officers asked dispatch to call back the 911 caller. She declined to discuss details of that follow-up call.
