Police stake out two gunmen

Off campus robbery leads to stand off Four men were arrested after allegedly robbing a delicatessen and shooting at plainclothes police officers around 9:45 p.m. last night in the 4100 block of Baltimore Avenue, University Police Sergeant Thomas Rambo said. While two suspects were apprehended immediately, the other two suspects went on top of a roof of a 41st Street house, which led to an intense stakeout as the area was secured for backup. After the suspects fired shots that shattered the windshield of an unmarked police car, the Philadelphia Police officers in pursuit of the robbery suspects put out a call for backup. Approximately 30 police vehicles, including University Police cars, appeared on the scene within minutes and tightly barricaded the area marked by 40th Street, 43rd Street, Baltimore Avenue and Pine Street. With their guns pointed toward the roof, police officers surrounded the building the suspects were in and waited for the police stakeout team to arrive. At approximately 10:20 p.m., stake-out officers in body armor carrying rifles arrested the two men on the roof of the building without incident, Rambo said. "The people who were eluding the police were captured," Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Bill McDonough said on the scene last night to cameramen and press gathered at 40th and Baltimore. Three or four guns, believed to belong to the suspects, were found in the snow near 41st Street and Baltimore Avenue after the arrests. Soon after the men were apprehended, all were positively identified by the police, Rambo said. The men were then taken to Southwest Detectives to be charged. During the incident, which lasted over an hour, students and residents gathered nervously around the police blockades. University Police aided Philadelphia Police in keeping pedestrians out of the area and directing traffic. Rambo said University Police left the scene once the stakeout officers arrived because the stakeout officers broadcast on a different frequency than University Police. And in an unrelated incident, a woman and her child escaped from a near-carjacking at 38th and Spruce streets last night at about 1 a.m.. The woman, who is the wife of an 18th District Philadelphia Police officer, was driving east on Spruce Street when a car with two men rear-ended her vehicle. When she stopped at the 38th and Spruce streets traffic light, one man got out trying to pry open the driver's side door. The woman drove south on 38th Street. The assailants were last seen traveling east on Spruce Street, according to Veterans' Affairs Hospital Police Officer Donald Wilson.