The Philly Nightmare

What does Clyde Walker's murder say about our city?

by Brian Hickey

Veronica Walker is a registered nurse at CHOP. She lives in a house with a white picket fence out front. There's a swing on the porch and pictures of her husband, Clyde, and two preteen kids, Kareem and Vanessa, throughout the living room.

A Jamaican who emigrated after marrying her first love in 1986, it'd be easy to assume she's living the American dream. But she isn't.

Veronica Walker is a widow. Her wounds are still fresh. Clyde was shot to death right outside one of the West Philly properties he bought cheap, renovated and rented out. The initial call to police was placed at 1:27 p.m. Broad daylight on a Monday. He was declared dead at HUP exactly 50 minutes later. Veronica last spoke to him around noon. She was working right next door when the medics brought him in. She had no idea.

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Today, when she talks about her late husband in the present tense � Clyde is this, and Clyde does that � it's easy to assume she's living the Philadelphia nightmare. Because she is.

"Everywhere I look, I see Clyde," Veronica says inside the Drexel Hill home she never imagined could feel this empty. There's a sympathy plant on the end table, a memorial-service card in front of her, a teary-eyed mother-in-law to her side and memories everywhere from the windows to the floorboards that Clyde installed himself. "We're going on a family vacation to Puerto Vallarta in June, and he wanted to retire in five years so we could enjoy everything he worked so hard for," she says. "So many dreams have been cut short for no apparent reason."

Such stories of loss may feel all too common, but to say that Clyde Walker doesn't fit Philly's perceived homicide-victim profile is an understatement. At 48 years old, he was well past the "young at-risk black male" demographic. Having graduated from Temple University with a business administration degree, he far surpassed the typical victim's educational level. And as opposed to hustling in the Badlands or cruising the Southwest streets all night, Clyde was a doting father who served as his church's choir and youth director. He also ran himself ragged after leaving JPMorgan to become a self-employed real-estate investor. This wasn't a guy who had something like this coming.

Yet when between five and eight shots were fired April 16 outside 5105 Warren St., a somewhat-abandoned side block off Lancaster Avenue with a church at one end, a car-repair garage at the other and people chilling on the porches of the remaining row homes in between, he'd be left for dead.

Bullets couldn't care less about victim profiles, the kindness of one's heart or its target's accomplishments in life. They're engineered to kill or maim anything that gets in their way, so that's what they do, and that's what they did.

Since Clyde had just collected $250 in rent from a tenant, the homicide detective who carried the tragic news through the picket fence that night told Veronica it looked like a robbery gone horrific. And since nobody will admit to having seen anything � though a neighbor heard Clyde beg, "No, no, stop it!" before the shots were fired � the investigative trail seemingly ends there.

That's why, just three days after burying her soul mate (they waited so they could get visas for relatives to come up), Veronica seems more frustrated and angry than numb with grief. Or, like she said about her kids, maybe it's just that "it hasn't sunk in yet." Perhaps she also still thinks she's "going to see him again." Even though she knows she won't.

During the three weeks since Clyde's slaying, Veronica's been not only scrambling to tie up her husband's loose business ends, but canvassing the tough neighborhood herself, asking the questions that nobody will answer. (One neighbor had the gall to ask if she wanted to sell the place that's distinct because of the high security fence blocking it off from the sidewalk.)

She's pretty sure the cops are sick of her incessant calls, too, but she needs answers, and, realizing that every passing day drops new homicide cases on the detectives' shoulders, she's not willing to stop until she gets them. So with no suspect to focus on, Veronica blames ineffective law-enforcement leadership in a big city that claimed her husband's life. That, and the pathetic reality that people won't speak up because they fear � probably with good cause �for their lives.

That's where she finds the anger that's still masking her sadness.

"The crime rate is going way up, and it doesn't seem like they're doing anything to resolve the problem. They just talk the talk, but they don't do the walk," she says, her slight accent containing traces of her homeland as her eyes start to well. "It's getting worse and worse and worse.

"We've gotten to the point where each murder victim is just another number. They don't even have names anymore. How much worse can it get? Somebody knows something. And they should speak up because next time, it could be their father, or husband, or brother. If this keeps up, who's going to be left? Only the criminals, and they will rule the city."

Will rule? Or already do?

(hickey@citypaper.net)