PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The parents of one of the victims of the Kingsessing mass shooting two years ago are suing the company that sold the suspected shooter part of the assault rifle he used to commit the massacre.
Jonah and Helen Wamah, the parents of 31-year-old Joseph Wamah Jr., are suing an Indiana-based businessman and two of his businesses for selling 40-year-old Kimbrady Carriker a lower receiver.
“Which is what makes a firearm a firearm when you’re talking about long guns, so guns that are sort of assault rifles, rifles, things like that,” said Jack O’Neill, one of the Wamahs' attorneys.
When police caught Carriker after the shooting spree on July 2 and 3, 2023, he was armed with two weapons — a handgun and an assault rifle. The rifle is what prosecutors believe he used to kill five people, including Wamah Jr., and injure four more. The shooting spree was one of the deadliest in Philadelphia's history.
“The rapid increase of the use of these ghost guns in crimes over the last five to 10 years in Philadelphia is really quite terrifying," O’Neill said.
O’Neill says companies, like the ones named in the lawsuit, target people who can’t get a gun through a legal avenue, like Carriker, who has a 2003 gun charge.
“Their business model is to sell them to people who otherwise couldn’t get them… They even boast about in their marketing that: ‘We’re gonna do it in a way where the background check’s not done, where there’s no record of it as there should be, it’s untraceable.' They don’t put serial numbers on these things,” O’Neill said.
This is the second lawsuit brought against a ghost gun company stemming from the mass shooting. A previous suit regarding the handgun Carriker allegedly used was settled for more than $1 million last year.