Did Fishtown Just Suffer Its First Native-On-Transplant Murder?
As a surging interest in Fishtown real estate has brought hundreds if not thousands of new residents to the neighborhood in the last decade, native/gentrifier relations are still — and this is predictable for Philly in general — pretty much block-to-block. Some folks on either side of the equation have horror stories and real acrimony; still others have gained friends and neighbors that they’ll keep for life. But when Fishtowners of every stripe gather tonight on the 1300 block of Hewson Street to hold a vigil for Shane Kelly, a 27-year-old man who was slain on that block on Saturday night, we suspect that they’ll all walk away a little bit closer. But at a horrible cost.
The details of the crime are still coming together, but here is what is known: Around 12:30 on Saturday night/Sunday morning, Kelly and his girlfriend were walking home from a neighborhood bar when two assailants attempted to snatch her purse near the corner of Berks and Thompson. Kelly apparently then chased the assailants, and as they fled down Hewson, six shots were fired by the empty-handed assailants, one of which hit Kelly in the chest. He died later that morning.
We spoke to sources in the neighborhood who told us that Kelly, a Mayfair native, had recently relocated to the neighborhood, had rehabbed a home on Ritter Street, and was active in neighborhood soccer programs. In short, he was a good neighbor. And in quick turnaround, a 20-year-old named Ryan McManus was arrested sometime in the last 24 hours and charged with Kelly’s murder. (The other suspected assailant is still on the loose.) As it turns out, Kelly and McManus didn’t live all that far from one another.
No matter what, this is an awful, utterly senseless crime, and it would have rocked Fishtown to its core. But as it turns out, McManus may have some connection to a nuisance house on Belgrade and Hewson that neighbors new and old have been complaining about for literally years. Between this bit of scuttlebutt and this heartwrenching thread posted by Kelly’s girlfriend on Fishtown.us, trying to track down some good samaritans who’d helped them after the shooting, it’s evolved into a discussion that now involves everyone in Fishtown. But again, at a truly horrible cost.
