Ishan Charmidah Rahman, 39, a Black/African American female, was killed on the evening of February 21, 2020, in North Philadelphia while she was six months pregnant. She was inside a silver minivan near the 800 block of West Dauphin Street, in the area of 9th and Dauphin/York streets, when gunfire erupted just before 6 p.m. What had been an ordinary Friday evening turned into a fatal ambush as multiple shots were fired at the vehicle.
Police said at least two or three men began shooting
at the minivan while Rahman was riding with a man described in reports as her fiancé and the father of her unborn child. Rahman was struck once in the chest. The man with her was also shot in the chest and shoulder, but despite his own injuries, he drove them both to Temple University Hospital. Rahman died shortly after arriving at the hospital.
Doctors performed an emergency C-section in an attempt to save her baby boy, but the child did not survive. Her death left her family grieving not only Rahman, but also the baby she had been preparing to welcome. Family members described her as outgoing, fun, silly, and quirky, and reports said she left behind five other children. One relative said the youngest child, an 11-year-old with Down syndrome, had not yet been told that his mother had been killed.
In the first days after the shooting, police were searching for the gunman, and Rahman’s family publicly pleaded for accountability. Her brother-in-law, Ronald Waters, said the killing showed the urgency of addressing gun violence and illegal weapons in Philadelphia, especially because Rahman was in the late stages of pregnancy when she was shot.
An arrest came quickly. On Monday, February 24, 2020, Philadelphia police arrested 21-year-old Razique Bumpas, of the 4000 block of Maywood Street in Juniata Park. Authorities accused him of being involved in the shooting that killed Rahman and her unborn child. He was charged with murder, first-degree murder of an unborn child, robbery, criminal conspiracy, possession of an instrument of crime, firearms violations, and related offenses. Some reports described the case as involving two counts of first-degree murder.
Police did not publicly release a motive at the time of Bumpas’ arrest and did not explain in detail how investigators identified him as a suspect. Early police accounts said multiple men opened fire on the minivan, but the publicly available reports centered on Bumpas as the arrested suspect. No clear public reporting was found identifying additional arrested suspects in the shooting.
Later online reporting indicated that Bumpas was convicted for his role in Rahman’s death and would spend decades in prison after sentencing, with the shooting described as connected to a drug deal gone bad. Publicly available mainstream local reports from the time of the arrest, however, primarily document the charges, Rahman’s death, the death of her unborn son, and the fact that Bumpas remained jailed as the case proceeded.
