TYSON MCCLOUD
SHANNON MCDONALD
The Temple News
UPDATE: Police have named the victim as Khiry Caldwell, pictured to the left. As of 11 p.m. Tuesday, he is in stable condition at Temple Hospital.
An 18-year-old male is in critical condition at Temple Hospital this afternoon after he was shot in the back around 4:15 p.m. near the 1700 block of North Broad Street following his high school’s graduation ceremony, police said.
The male, who had graduated from Strawberry Mansion High School in a ceremony that ended minutes earlier at the Liacouras Center, was struck when shots were fired outside of the Barnes & Noble at Broad Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue after a fistfight among about 12 males, said Capt. Laurence D. Nodiff, commanding officer of the 23rd police district.
Police have five men in custody and are looking for another potential suspect dressed in an orange shirt, Nodiff said. He did not provide any other details about the men in custody or the potential suspect and said he did not know if they were Strawberry Mansion students.
Nodiff also said that no gun was recovered at the scene.
“This is supposed to be a day of celebration,” Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey told reporters while standing within the yellow caution tape that surrounded the front of Barnes & Noble. “It’s unfortunate.”
As Strawberry Mansion graduates exited the Liacouras Center, a fight erupted outside of Wendy’s and progressed past the Barnes & Noble, Nodiff said. As the scuffle continued past the bookstore, Temple Police arrived and attempted to diffuse the situation when shots rang out.
Students, friends and family who were filing in for Martin Luther King High School’s graduation ceremony – which was held after Strawberry Mansion’s commencement – were among the crowd that gathered outside the Liacouras Center following the shooting. Local TV news trucks were parked along the street as helicopters hovered above and passerby looked on.
The Liacouras Center, a 10-year-old, 10,200-seat arena, hosted three high school commencements today, including Dobbins Tech High School’s ceremony in the morning, said two of the facility’s employees who asked not to be named.
Caution tape was removed from the scene at 6:05 p.m.
An investigation into the shooting is ongoing, authorities said.
Stay with temple-news.com for continuing updates on this story.
Tyson McCloud can be reached at tyson@temple.edu.
Shannon McDonald can be reached at shannon.mcdonald@temple.edu
Photo courtesy myspace.com.
Another on-campus shooting, and another time where Temple doesn’t bother to inform us? What is the TU Alert for? Can you just get rid of it and lower tuition a little, because you have all made it PAINFULLY obvious just how much you care about us.
I don’t care if the kid doesn’t go here, we want to know immediately.
As an alum and parent of a son who goes to Temple and also works there in the summer, I would like to have seen the alert go out. Summer is no different than the fall or spring term. The reality is what needs to be communicated and not concern for the PR impact, which is the only reason I could think of not to give the info.
Joe Conway “75”
Temple started the TU alert after it was all over the news that if Virginia Tech had had an alert sent to every student and they had told those students to remain in their dorms, lives could have been saved. I haven’t heard anything about the shooter from the first on-campus shooting of the summer even being caught yet, but the Temple cops said that they didn’t send an alert because they were pretty sure it was a “domestic situation.” The same thing they thought at Virginia Tech…I would appreciate it if the Temple cops didn’t bet my life on their assumptions as a shooter escapes into the university area.