Pittsburgh Police Arrest Teenager In East Busway Killing, Search For Others

A map of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with its neighborhoods labeled. For use primarily in the list of Pittsburgh neighborhoods. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pittsburgh police said today they have arrested one teenager and are looking for leads on two other people in connection with the killing and robbery last week of a man in Homewood along the East Busway.

Police said Jordan Bey, 16, of Homewood shot Omar Islam, 21, once in the leg, five times in the back and once in the head while Mr. Islam waited for a bus.

Detectives arrested Jordan at relative’s home in Duquesne on Monday night.

Detectives are also looking for Desmond Young, 20, of Homewood, who has not been charged but who is listed in court documents as conspiring with Jordan and for leads on a Homewood man known to police only as “Blue.”

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-city/pittsburgh-police-arrest-boy-16-in-east-busway-killing-707666/#ixzz2hpRCKjD7

Residents Of Homewood Search For Alternative To Demolishing Houses

Locator map with the Homewood North neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania highlighted. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Homewood‘s sense of place is eroding so fast that 184 homes have been razed since 2011 and another 232 are condemned. Residents are torn. They value the building stock that attests to better days, but blight is outpacing opportunities to save what’s viable.

Just in time for the neighborhood’s biggest investment in decades, Operation Better Block staff began a door-to-door campaign to motivate hundreds of residents to face this crisis by helping to plan housing strategies.

“Demolition was the only recourse people thought we had,” said Jerome Jackson, executive director of Operation Better Block. Even if it is, he added, people need information to be comfortable with that.

A neighborhood advocacy nonprofit since 1971, Operation Better Block initiated a resident-driven plan for the use of vacant land and buildings two years ago in a test area of 46 parcels near Pittsburgh Faison K-5. The school was a crucial reason to strengthen that area, which is also near the East Busway and the ripest area for investment.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-city/residents-of-homewood-search-for-alternative-to-demolishing-houses-706527/#ixzz2h3n9teMY