Police ID Man Allegedly Responsible For Stabbing Rampage In Cobbs Creek
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Police say 32-year-old Christopher Sowell is responsible for a violent stabbing rampage in which he critically injured multiple people, including his own young son.
"I just seen blood," said Quadir Molli, a neighbor in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood where the violence took place. Molli says he never expected the neighbor he knew in passing would go on a stabbing spree, injuring five people.
"It was just crazy," Molli said. "It's my son's friend. Anything could've happened. My son could've been over there."
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Police say they responded to a report of shots fired just before 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday night on the 6200 block of Hazel Avenue, but when they arrived, they discovered Sowell had apparently choked his daughter, then stabbed both his eight-year-old son and his son's 13-year-old friend, multiple times in the chest.
"It's just a violent rampage that did not end well," Police commissioner Richard Ross. "We're hoping at least the kids will survive." Both children remain in critical condition at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Molli says after the initial stabbings, he saw Sowell run off down the street.
Police later found him about a half mile away on the 700 block of Cobbs Creek Parkway where he had slashed the throat of a 70-year-old woman, who is in critical condition at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.
Police say when a 41-year-old woman at the home tried to intervene, Sowell punched her in the face multiple times. Police shot Sowell as he tried to leave the home.
"He's got his hand in his pocket. They tell him several times to take his hand out. He abruptly takes his hand out and they fire multiple times striking him," Commissioner Ross said.
Eyewitness News counted more than two dozen bullet holes at the scene. The suspect later died at the hospital.
Police say Sowell's 12-year-old daughter told them he may have been high on drugs at the time of the attacks.
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"The daughter did say he was home and all of a sudden his eyes are wide and he starts to choke her for no reason," Commissioner Ross explained. Police found multiple blades and a meat cleaver at the scene, though they don't believe Sowell used it.
