SEPTA Police shot a 23-year-old black male on the Broad Street Line near Temple Hospital at the Allegheny Avenue station Wednesday afternoon, SEPTA spokesman Jim Whitaker said.
The shooting, which occurred around 1 p.m., jammed up subway lines and slowed down dozens of confused Temple students and commuters for more than two hours.
On the northbound line, two SEPTA plainclothes officers observed the man riding between two subway cars smoking a cigarette, Whitaker said. The officers asked him to come into the car. When the man refused, they removed him from the train at the next stop.
The man became confrontational, Whitaker said, and began to run. When he pulled a gun, the two officers shot him in the shoulder and torso. Neither of the police officers was injured.
The man was transported to Temple Hospital, just two blocks away, and is listed in guarded condition, Officer Christine O’Brien of the Philadelphia Police Department said.
The shooting occurred underground in front of the Kornberg School of Dentistry, right on the southernmost edge of Temple’s Health Sciences Center campus.
Temple spokesman Ray Betzner declined to comment.
Subway trains were suspended at Allegheny station from the time of the shooting until 3:10 p.m., while SEPTA and Philadelphia Police were investigating, Whitaker said.
At Cecil B. Moore Avenue, a SEPTA official directed Temple students onto packed shuttle buses that took them down to Girard Avenue. All stops north of Girard were temporarily closed.
Eric Horvath, a senior journalism major who was waiting for the southbound train at crowded Girard station, said he was “completely oblivious” to the shooting.
“Other than the [SEPTA official] and the…lady at the ticket office,” he didn’t receive much information, Horvath said.
At the corner of Broad and Girard, SEPTA station manager Andrew Coleman was on duty for “crowd control.”
“It’s been chaos,” Coleman said. “People have been upset, angry and any other negative thing you could think of.”
While patrolling the corner, Coleman said a fight broke out as people exited the shuttle bus, and a woman was caught between the closing doors at one point.
Kenny Ivery, of Northeast Philadelphia, lamented on the shooting and the occasional dangers of riding the subway.
“It slowed me down today, but it’s really an everyday problem,” Ivery said. “These young kids don’t have any respect. I try to avoid riding during peak hours because of it.”
Nick Pipitone can be reached at nicholas.pipitone@temple.edu.
Photographs taken by Greg Bezanis for The Temple News
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