A journalist and advocate who rose from homelessness and addiction to serve as a spokesperson for Philadelphia’s most vulnerable was shot and killed at his home early Monday, police said.
Josh Kruger, 39, was shot seven times at about 1:30 a.m. and collapsed in the street after seeking help, police said. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. Police believe the door to his Point Breeze home was unlocked or the shooter knew how to get in, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. No arrests have been made and no weapons have been recovered, they said.
Authorities haven’t spoken publicly about the circumstances surrounding the killing.
The people in these comments talking like this is “just another day in a US city” have no fucking idea what they’re talking about. This is not the kind of violence that randomly happens. This person was clearly targeted.
They also fail to grasp the concept of “per capita” crime/murder statistics.
Per capita? Really? Try per capita gun murders around the world and see what countries the US keeps company with. I mean, your argument is basically because there are lots of people, being shot is NBD because the odds are low because there are lots of people?
And yeah, again, compared to other places this is the kind of violence that happens in the US.
However, this was a targeted shooting. A deliberate murder. That does tend to be a more rare occurrence, but it’s dishonest to break it out and treat it separately from the overall use of crime related gun use in the US.
What? Way to miss the point entirely. Not only that, but you’ve completely misrepresented my argument.
First: yes, this was clearly a targeted shooting, so this discussion doesn’t really apply to this specific case. However…
I haven’t said anything was no big deal, just pointing out basic statistics. Using the concept of “per capita,” when discussing phenomena among very large groups of people, is one of the (if not the) only ways to glean any valuable information from the data.
1,000 gun crimes seems like a lot in a town of 23,000 people. 1,000 gun crimes in a city of 2,000,000 people? Not so much… (obviously these numbers were made up to make a point)
No, I didn’t miss your point. I understand perfectly what you meant. However, you did miss my pointing out of your use of statistics via per capita as an argument to water down risk against the broader view of the US gun crime rate vs the rest of the world to point out that yes, Indeed, this is a US problem.
If I implied anywhere that I thought it wasn’t a US problem, that was not my intention at all. Clearly it is.
Per capita rates of gun violence in the United States are almost 90 times higher than the United Kingdom, for instance.
Yes. This is a uniquely American problem. I am agreeing with you.
Actually, I was agreeing with you. I hadn’t posted anything prior, so you couldn’t have been agreeing or disagreeing with me. I think you confused me for the other person. 😀
“A targeted shooting a deliberate murder… that does tend to be more rare”
Accidental fatal shootings are well known to exceed intentional ones.
It’s rare to get an article on individual targeted killings, but they do in fact comprise the majority of killings. So no, this is not a rare form of killing at all, it’s simply being reported because it’s another journalist.