PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Three Philadelphia SWAT officers were shot in the West Poplar section of the city Wednesday morning. They are in stable condition at the hospital.
Police said the officers were serving a homicide warrant at a house on North 10th Street, near Brown Street, around 6 a.m. When they knocked on the door, the suspect fired through the door and window.
One officer was hit in the hip, another in the leg, and the third in the chest. Police believe the third officer’s bulletproof vest stopped the bullet.
The 19-year-old suspect tried to flee the property through a back door, police said, and fired shots at other officers. That's when SWAT officers returned fire, striking the suspect.
He died shortly thereafter at the hospital. Officials later identified him as Raheem Lee.
Police said there were others in the house at the time. Initially, it did not appear that they were involved but police say more investigative work is needed.
Police said Lee was wanted for the shooting death of Theodore Bell on Aug. 21, as well as multiple armed robberies over the last few years.
Two of the injured officers are expected to be released from the hospital by the end of the day, while the third will stay for observation.
Investigators found more than two dozen yellow bullet casing markers in the street and sidewalk. Meanwhile, police are locating security camera footage from residents and businesses which they say could be useful in the ongoing investigation.
Mayor Jim Kenney visited Jefferson University Hospital, where the officers were being treated.
"This is probably the most dangerous part of policing," he said, "serving a warrant on someone you know or suspect to be a murderer and involved in other kinds of crimes. It just shows that our officers continue every single day and every single night to work their best, to be brave, to put themselves in harm's way, and to do that for us."
Deputy Commissioner John Stanford accompanied Kenney. While he's glad the officers are OK, he's angry at the situation.
"This is ridiculous," he said. "Within a few days, we had officers fired upon in East Division, and now we have officers that are shot. This is something that these officers sign up to do ... to protect and serve, but not to take gunfire. ... This is not normal.
"It's not a day that goes by that we don't either have a child that's shot or multiple people shot," he continued, "because there are too many people that are out here carrying guns and they don't have consequences. Some of these people need to be in jail, and that's the bottom line."
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Stanford said he's "pointing the finger at everybody," questioning how a 19-year-old even became involved with serious alleged crimes and attained a lengthy record in the first place.
"There are too many people that have guns. This is a 19-year-old suspect, so something has been broken in this young man's life for a long time and it just didn't start today," he said.
In a statement, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw condemned the violence against the officers.
"It is NOT the job of our officers to be shot at," she wrote. "It is not their job to be stabbed, spat upon, accosted or attacked in any way. And this type of violence towards our police — towards anyone — can not continue to be normalized.
"We are tired of arresting the same suspects over and over again, only to see them right back out on the street to continue and sometimes escalate their criminal ways."
"It is never lost on me ... that our cases rely heavily on the investigative work of police and on the highly dangerous duty they have to apprehend criminal suspects in a society where guns outnumber people," added District Attorney Larry Krasner in a separate statement. "The work of SWAT is crucial and extraordinarily dangerous. We are grateful for the bravery and selflessness of Philadelphia Police officers and other law enforcement officers in our partner agencies."