For an ‘unbelievable’ string of shootings, West Philly gang member ‘Pistol P’ is sentenced to 45 to 90 years
Anthony Lacey-Woodson, 23, apologized and said he was filled with pain and a hope for revenge when he decided to shoot nine people over seven months in 2021.
After Anthony Lacey-Woodson’s uncle and teenage friend were shot and killed in December 2020, he decided he would hunt down the gunmen and kill them.
First, using friends to straw purchase guns in the suburbs, Lacey-Woodson assembled “an arsenal” of weapons, said Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Palmer.
And then, over the next seven months, Lacey-Woodson, then 18, used those guns to shoot nine people, killing three, across West Philadelphia — all in the name of his uncle.
Yet, Palmer said, none of his victims was believed to have been responsible for the deaths of Frank “Tooley” Smith and 15-year-old Saabir “Booka” Mack that cold December night.
Lacey-Woodson, better known as “Pistol P,” was a member of 02da4, a gang from the area of 60th to 64th Streets in West Philadelphia. Palmer said he and others in the group would drive through the neighborhood searching for members of 524 — affiliated with 52nd and 54th Streets in Kingsessing — who they blamed for killing Smith and Mack.
The quest for revenge became a back-and-forth gang war that left 53 people shot, and 16 dead, in just 11 months, Palmer said.
The shootings Lacey-Woodson committed as part of that were “unbelievable,” Common Pleas Court Judge J. Scott O’Keefe said Wednesday. “This was one of the most callous things I have ever seen in my life.”
He sentenced the 22-year-old to spend 45 to 90 years in prison.
The lengthy sentence was, in part, because all three people Lacey-Woodson admitted to killing were bystanders, struck by one of the dozens of bullets he fired aimlessly into a series of crowds over three nights.
First, on Jan. 16, 2021, Woodson and others shot more than 60 rounds into an Airbnb party on the 3800 block of Parrish Street, where they were told a 524 member was hanging out. Instead, a 34-year-old woman was struck in the arm.
Then, on March 9 — Mack’s birthday — he drove to 52nd and Pentridge Streets looking for another 524 enemy. Instead, he and his friends found Antonio Walker Jr., a 15-year-old sophomore and standout athlete who was walking to play basketball with his cousin.
They shot Walker, who had no affiliation to the groups, in the chest, laughing as they drove away, Palmer said.
And finally, on the night of July 4, Lacey-Woodson shot seven people in just a two-hour span, moving from one enemy’s home to another in West Philly, before landing at 60th and Sansom Streets.
There was barbecue underway to celebrate the three-year anniversary of Sircarr Johnson Jr.’s clothing store, Palmer said, and Lacey-Woodson heard that one of the men who killed Smith was attending.
The gunmen, armed with weapons with blue lasers, ran up to the corner and, within seconds, fired more than 100 shots, Palmer said.
Johnson, 23, and Salahaldin Mahmoud, 21, were struck by stray bullets and killed. Neither was affiliated with the gang’s feuds.
Two women were also wounded.
Johnson’s mother, Pamela Owensby, spoke Wednesday of the life she built for her four sons as a single mother. Johnson, her second-youngest child, knew from a young age that he wanted to own a business, she said, and he was proud to have opened one in his home neighborhood.
He was passionate about giving back to his community, she said, and often offered jobs to young people as a way to keep them off the corners and from selling drugs. He was a loving father to a 6-month-old daughter.
That little girl is 4 now, she said, and constantly asks about her father.
“Every day, she says, ‘Mom-Mom, I know he’s in heaven, but I just want to see him,’” Owensby said. “What am I supposed to tell her? How am I supposed to live with that every day?”
Johnson’s aunt, Lea Ross, said she was also hurt for Lacey-Woodson’s family.
“We didn’t just lose Sircarr,” she said. “We‘re losing another Black man again.”
Harry Miller, Lacey-Woodson’s uncle, said Wednesday that his nephew was raised in a loving home, but struggled in the absence of his father, who was incarcerated for most of his life.
His nephew’s troubles started after the family moved to Southwest Philly, he said. As the “new kid” on the block, Lacey-Woodson was relentlessly bullied, Miller said, beaten up on the playground and chased home from school.
“He got tired of running,” he said, and started to fight back. And then, when Smith was killed, he said, his nephew began to “mentally destruct.”
“Sometimes, it appears when you have no hope, no help — there’s no excuse ever, but you take matters into your own hands," he said.
Near the end of the hearing, Lacey-Woodson, dressed in a white button down, tried to explain himself and apologize.
Everything he did was a mistake, he said. He was not raised this way, he said, and after losing six friends in one year to shootings, he was filled with pain.
“If I could go back in time and change everything, I would,” he said. “I regret everything. I was young, I was in pain.”
His voice cracked and faded. He dropped his head down to his chest, and shook his head.
The judge appeared unmoved, and quickly handed down the decades-long sentence. Lacey-Woodson said he would appeal.
After the hearing, Johnson’s family gathered in the hallway and thanked law enforcement for their work. Many of them have moved out of Philadelphia in the nearly four years since the shooting, they said — to Atlanta, Ohio, and Nevada, hoping for a fresh start.
Owensby, Johnson’s mother, left for Las Vegas last summer. There by herself, she said, she feels somewhat free.
“Every day now,” she said, “I look out at the mountains.”
And she thinks of her son.