What they do for fun.
The four teenagers who ambushed Sean Patrick Conroy (right) in a subway concourse Wednesday chose their victim at random and attacked him for no other purpose than to amuse themselves, police said yesterday.
“He just happened to be walking in front of them and they picked him out,” said Homicide Lt. Melvin Williams.
The District Attorney’s Office said Kinta Stanton, 16, of the 4900 block of North Smedley Street in the Logan section of the city, was arraigned yesterday afternoon on murder and conspiracy charges. Officials will seek to try Stanton, a 10th grader at Simon Gratz High School in North Philadelphia with a clean record, as an adult. He was being held without bail.
Police last night were searching for three of his classmates who they said participated in the 2:35 p.m. attack on the Market-Frankford Line concourse at 13th and Market Streets. The four students, police said, were truant from school when they went after the 36-year-old Starbucks manager, who yesterday was described by some who knew him as “cheerful” and “meek and mild.”
Police yesterday discounted robbery as a motive, and said the youths apparently launched the attack on a lark.
“I think that’s what makes it so horrific, the fact that anybody could have basically been the victim of this type of behavior,” said Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Ross.
Although Philadelphia has experienced a 28 percent decline in homicides this year, the death of a commuter during daylight hours in the heart of Center City has stunned officials, and threatened to eclipse the impression that a new mayor and police commissioner were conquering crime.
“This is not Philadelphia,” Mayor Nutter said during a visit to the crime scene yesterday. “Bad things, unfortunately, happen in a lot of places. It’s a random, stupid act of violence.”
Police said Stanton confessed to the assault and told them how he and the three others were heading down the stairs leading to the concourse and the westbound subway when they came upon Conroy from behind. They then struck him on the head and pummeled him, and Conroy fell to his knees, police said.