Comment Authorities are looking for seven teenagers accused of fatally beating a 73-year-old man with a traffic cone last month in Philadelphia, police said late this week. Philadelphia Police Department officials said Saturday that four teenage boys and three teenage girls attacked James Lambert in the early morning hours of June 24 on Cecil B. Moore Boulevard in North Philadelphia. The teenagers hit him multiple times with “objects,” knocking him to the ground and causing head injuries, police said. Surveillance video released by police shows a group of teenagers chasing the victim and hurling what appears to be a traffic cone at him. The video shows a teenager chasing him down the street and hitting him with a traffic cone. Soon after, another teenager was seen picking it up and hitting him again, then chasing him down the sidewalk and hitting him with it a third time. Police said Lambert, who was blurred out in the video, was taken to a hospital where he died the next day from his injuries. Attempts to reach Lambert’s relatives Saturday were unsuccessful. The White DA, the Black ex-mayor and a tough talk on crime It is unclear what happened in the moments leading up to the attack or if the teenagers knew the victim. But for about 20 minutes afterward, the teenagers could be seen on surveillance video roaming the area, one of them riding a scooter. Relatives of the victim told WCAU in Philadelphia that they had seen Lambert, also known as “Simmie,” hours before the incident and could not believe that his children had attacked him. Police said the black teenagers appeared to be in their early to mid-teens. Police have not released any further descriptions other than the teenager had blonde hair. Family members told the news station they are heartbroken. As of July 8, there had been 280 homicides in Philadelphia in 2022 — a 4 percent decrease from the same period last year, according to crime statistics from the Philadelphia Police Department. More people were killed in Philadelphia in 2021 than any other year in recent history. It sparked a heated debate over policing and criminal justice between two prominent Philadelphia Democrats — District Attorney Larry Krasner, who is white, and former Mayor Michael Nutter, who is black. As Washington Post reporter Cleve R. Wootson Jr. reported at the time: The year 2021 in the City of Brotherly Love will always be marked by the shocking number of people whose lives came to an abrupt and violent end: an 18-year-old was shot two weeks before his high school graduation, two men were killed in a hail of gunfire at a cooking on the 4th of July, a pregnant woman was murdered while taking presents from her baby. Police said a $20,000 reward is being offered for any information leading to an arrest and conviction in the June 24 attack. The case is being investigated by the homicide unit, police said.
