Just after 9:30 a.m on March 22, Rasheen Naseeb Robinson pulled his car into the Liberty gas station in East Kensington and stopped in its convenience store. When Robinson, 22, headed back to his car, a gunman shot him five times, including once in the head. He died minutes later.
On August 14, 2021, at about 5 a.m., Alexander Vincent Ott, 29, stopped at the Gulf station in Wynnefield, a leafy neighborhood just inside the city’s western border. Ott wanted to gas up before completing the half-hour drive to his girlfriend’s home in the city’s Northeast section, his mother said. But while Ott was pumping gas, a gunman shot him multiple times in the back, killing him instantly.
The unsolved murders of Robinson and Ott are among 9 killings committed at Philadelphia gas stations in 2021 and so far this year. That’s up from zero such homicides in 2018, 2019, and 2020, police said.