Freed W. Phila. murder suspects file city lawsuits

The former Lex Street massacre suspects are in court again. This time, they're on the offensive. Four former defendants in a case involving the murders of seven West Philadelphia residents -- one of the most violent crimes in the city's history -- have brought separate lawsuits against a host of defendants -- including the city, the Philadelphia police detectives involved, the witnesses and each other. Hezekiah Thomas, Sacon Youk, Quiante Perrin and Jermel Lewis filed lawsuits after spending eighteen months in jail for a crime the city now says they did not commit. After the men were released in June, the police detained four different men in connection with the shooting: Shihean Black, Dawid Faruqi, Khalid Faruqi and Bruce Veney. The shooting, known as the Lex Street massacre, was one of the most violent crimes in the city's history. On Dec. 28, 2000, four men in black ski masks allegedly rounded up 10 people in a Lex Street row house and forced them to lie face down on the floor. Two men then allegedly filled the room with gunfire that resulted in the death of seven people and the injury of three others. The police originally believed that the four men, then identified as Youk, Thomas, Perrin and Lewis, committed the murders in a war over drug turf, and arrested them in early January 2001. They remained in jail until last July, when the prosecutor, who had been seeking the death penalty, released them and pronounced them innocent. Police later arrested four different men in connection with the shooting and determined the motive to be a neighborhood dispute over a car rather than a drug war. During the original investigation, Black had confessed to the crime but was written off as a suicidal maniac attempting to land himself on death row. However, his confession was later substantiated after police arrested another one of the current defendants on a gun charge. The four original defendants filed separate claims last week in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. These men "were falsely arrested and subjected to a malicious prosecution," Lewis' attorney David Rudovsky, a professor in Penn's Law School, said. "They were innocent and the police and district attorney should have known that." The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that in his suit, Youk has also named Lewis, claiming that he falsely implicated him in connection with the crime. Lewis had originally confessed to police that he was the lookout man, a statement he now claims was coerced. The lawsuit will move into the next stage when the city completes its investigation of the incident and files a report with the court.