A 51-year-old man who had been experiencing homelessness died after being stabbed several times in the back in Philadelphia's tony Rittenhouse Square Thursday night, police said.
Police responded to the intersection of 18th and Walnut streets after a group of people began fighting just after 10 p.m., Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said. When they arrived, they saw the victim bleeding.
The man, later identified as Dean Jordan, appeared to be intoxicated and was initially uncooperative. He physically resisted police and medics before eventually being transported to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Small said.
He was pronounced dead at 11:54 p.m.
Police talked to several witnesses at the scene who said a group of young men, believed to be in their early 20s, had been drinking and fighting in the park moments before Jordan was killed. Investigators have not identified any suspects but hope to gather surveillance video from multiple businesses in the area.
This is the latest fatal stabbing in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood. Last month, 22-year-old Michael White was found not guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the 2018 death of real estate developer Sean Schellenger.
The case sparked widespread attention, with a jury ultimately determining that prosecutors had not met their burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that White acted in anything but self-defense after Schellenger attacked him and uttered a racial slur.
