Desta Bnyahuda, a 30-year-old Black male from Philadelphia, was killed on Monday night, January 19, 2015, after gunfire broke out in the Strawberry Mansion section of the city. He lived on the 200 block of East Sedgwick Street, but that night he was on or near the 1700 block of North 31st Street, close to West Montgomery Avenue, when the shooting unfolded around 7:58 p.m.
Police arrived to find that three people had been hit. Desta had suffered a gunshot wound to the head.
Officers rushed him to Temple University Hospital, but he died from his injuries that night. A second victim, a 51-year-old man, was shot in the chest and taken to Temple University Hospital in critical or extremely critical condition. A third victim, identified in police information as a 35-year-old male and in a contemporaneous news report as a 35-year-old woman, was shot in the back and taken to Hahnemann University Hospital in critical condition.
The shooting was described as a triple shooting, with an unidentified gunman opening fire on the victims. The public reports do not describe a motive, the circumstances leading up to the attack, or whether the victims were specifically targeted. What is clear from the available information is that Desta was caught in a burst of violence that left one person dead and two others fighting for their lives.
No arrests were reported in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and the Philadelphia Police Department continues to list Desta Bnyahuda’s case as unsolved. No suspect name, charges, trial, or conviction appears in the available online source information. Homicide detectives investigated the case, and police have continued asking anyone with information to contact the Philadelphia Police Department tip line.
