Djibril Diall, a 20-year-old Black Senegalese male from Philadelphia, was killed on Wednesday, October 16, 2019, in the city’s Northeast section. That evening, around 5:45 p.m., Philadelphia police were called to the 3100 block of Barnett Street, where they found him suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He was still alive when officers arrived, and he was rushed to Jefferson-Torresdale Hospital, but the effort to save him ended later that night when he died from his injuries.
Public
police information lists Djibril as a resident of the 2700 block of Elbridge Street in Philadelphia. The circumstances made the killing especially devastating because the shooting appeared to happen during an ordinary stretch of the day, before night had fully fallen, in a residential area where someone may have seen or heard something. A Senegalese news report later described him as having been shot while returning from work, adding another layer of tragedy to the case: a young man trying to make his way home, only to be caught in fatal violence before he could get there.
After his death, Djibril’s body was reportedly returned to Senegal on Monday, October 21, 2019. His case drew attention beyond Philadelphia because he was counted among Senegalese members of the diaspora who had died violently abroad. The organization Horizons Sans Frontières publicly criticized how repatriation issues were handled, saying Djibril’s family had carried the financial burden of returning his remains home and arguing that official accounts understated the number of Senegalese nationals killed outside the country.
The Philadelphia Police Department has treated Djibril’s killing as an unsolved murder. Publicly available police records identify the case by district control number DC# 19-15-107173 and state that detectives were asking for help from anyone with information. No publicly available source located names a suspect, describes a motive, or reports an arrest, charges, trial, or conviction connected to his death. As of the available public case information, the investigation remained open, with police continuing to urge tips from anyone who knows what happened on Barnett Street that evening.
