PA Suspect Charged With Murder Weeks After Release

An habitual felon released on reduced bail December 29, has been arrested for the robbery and murder of a 25-year-old man two weeks later.  Danielle Wallace of Fox News reports that 20-year-old Davis Josephus was facing charges of kidnapping for ransom, auto theft, robbery, and firearms violations when a Philadelphia judge reduced his bail from $200,000 to $12,000 late last month, resulting in his release.  Video surveillance captured Josephus and an accomplice confront recent Temple University graduate Milan Loncar at gunpoint as he was walking his dog in a Brewerytown park last Wednesday.

Loncar was shot in the chest as the two criminals went through his pockets.  Shortly after the murder, Josephus was arrested as a suspect in an unrelated carjacking a day earlier, before police identified him as a suspect in the killing.  The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that there were 499 murders in the city in 2020, just one less than the record 500 who were killed in 1990.  Shootings topped 2,240 over the year, the highest number ever recorded.  The Mayor, Police Commissioner and Progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner told reporters that they believed that the spike in shootings and murders were caused by stress related to the pandemic, lack of public trust in the police after the George Floyd protests and the proliferation of guns.  The Inquirer story also notes that policies restricting the arrest of drug dealers and ending aggressive policing in high crime minority neighborhoods may have played a roll in the increased shootings.  It is also likely that the release of hundreds of suspects from county jail and state prison to protect them from getting Covid-19 and DA Krasner’s decision not to charge scores of looters, thieves and arsonists during the riots in Philadelphia over the summer also contributed.  With regard to the murder of Loncar,  Krasner argued that his office had opposed reduced bail in Josephus’ case, and claimed the murder was “directly related to firearms outnumbering people in a vacuum of reasonable regulation.”   Gun regulation, even an outright ban on all firearm ownership in Pennsylvania, would not have prevented Josephus or any other criminal who wanted one from getting a gun.  Instead of blaming the weapon, maybe holding those who repeatedly commit serious and  violent crimes accountable and keeping them behind bars would be more effective.