Gunplay on a North Philadelphia street critically wounded an armored-car guard who was shot in the head Thursday night while servicing an ATM in a neighborhood grocery, police said.
But the shooting about 7:30 p.m. in the 3000 block of North Ninth Street, near Clearfield Street, initially reported as a robbery, was not your garden-variety attempted heist, police said.
Instead, it appears the guard, 29, whose name was not released Thursday night, was the victim of an errant shot aimed by unidentified gunmen firing from outside the store at a 17-year-old male, police said.
The teenager, wounded outside the Ledesma Grocery, ran inside "to get away," said Officer Tanya Little, a Philadelphia police spokeswoman. "Shots entered the store, striking the guard. . . . [He] returned fire, shooting from inside of the store, through the front doors."
The youth was shot four times in the lower back and one arm.
It was not immediately clear whether the guard hit any of the gunmen shooting at the youth.
Neither the armored car nor the grocery store was the assailants' intended target, she said.
The guard was taken to Temple University Hospital in critical condition. The slug did not penetrate his skull; he was conscious and talking, police said.
The 17-year-old also was taken to Temple Hospital in critical condition. Police said they did not immediately know the motive behind his shooting.
Copyright 2012 - The Philadelphia Inquirer
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
