Three children who had been selling fruit to raise money for a playground were killed in North Philadelphia on Friday morning after two men carjacked an SUV and drove it into a crowd, police said.
Police identified the victims as 15-year-old Kiera Williams, 10-year-old Thomas Reed, and 7-year-old Terrence Williams.
The children were at a stand near Germantown and Allegheny Avenues, police said. Three other people were injured, including the children's mother, Keisha Williams, 34, who was "fighting for her life," said Deputy Mayor Everett Gillison.
The men were still at large Saturday morning. A reward for information leading to an arrest in the case stood at $110,000, with $10,000 of that coming from the Fraternal Order of Police. The deadline for the FOP award has been extended until noon Monday.
Witnesses struggled to maintain their composure as they described a scene of pandemonium: the battered SUV; the swarm of police and ambulances; the bodies scattered across the grassy lot on Allegheny.
"There are no words to describe how I feel right now," Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey told reporters at a news conference. Capt. James Clark called the incident "one of the saddest cases I've come across" in six years with the Homicide Unit.
Clark said the Toyota 4Runner that hit the children was carjacked about a mile away about 11 a.m.
The vehicle belonged to a real estate agent who was showing a house to a client in that neighborhood, he said. She had just wrapped up a meeting and was preparing to leave when two men approached the vehicle and forced their way in at gunpoint, Clark said.
They made the woman drive for some time before forcing her into the backseat, Clark said. One of them then took the wheel and sped north to Allegheny and Germantown, he said.
Police were still piecing together what happened at that intersection, Clark said. At some point, the vehicle blew a tire; at some point, the driver lost control and veered over a curb into the fruit stand.
"Something went horribly wrong," Clark said.
