![]() ![]() Out of the 87 homicides in the period surveyed, police made arrests in all but 20 of the cases-about 77 percent. (These and other numbers in this story, unless otherwise attributed, were compiled by TheBurg with data from the county coroner, court records and newspaper reports.)Īnd more often than not, when there was a murder in Harrisburg, someone was arrested and put away for the crime. Out of the 61 African-American men killed in those years, 49 were between the ages of 17 and 35, with a median age of 25. More often than not, the victims resembled Cockren and Simpson in two respects: they were black males, and they died at the barrel of a gun. In the six years between 20, there were 87 homicides in Harrisburg. ![]() He died of a gunshot wound to the chest, in a grassy lot behind the church’s back alley. This time, the victim was an 18-year-old named Valdez Cockren. on a Wednesday afternoon, police responded to another shooting in the neighborhood. Parishioners who had parked on the street found their cars were now part of a crime scene. “It was pretty traumatic to think somebody had been killed literally right through the wall from where we were,” Dana recalled recently. Howard Dana, who stood up between songs to make the announcement: there’s been a shooting, police are investigating, we’re safe but we have to stay in the building. The ushers at the back noticed the police cars first. On the corner, the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg was in the middle of services. One of them shot the driver, a 37-year-old man named Atlas Simpson, in the back of the head. ![]() The killing was in early spring, late one Sunday morning.Ī taxi van pulled up at 15 th and Market, carrying eight passengers who’d been partying the night before in a Swatara Township motel. Open and Closed: In Harrisburg, the homicide rate is high. ![]()
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