A 26-year-old man is awaiting sentencing for buying a handful of guns used in a violent West Philadelphia gang war several years ago, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Calvin Gatewood pleaded guilty last week to acting as a straw purchaser for Anthony Woodson, helping the teenager acquire firearms that were later used in multiple shootings, including a deadly attack on a Fourth of July cookout.
Authorities have accused Woodson, also known as “Pistol P,” of belonging to 02da4, a group based in the area of 66th St. and Haverford Ave., and helping to lead a wave of retaliatory violence in West and Southwest Philadelphia.
In 2020, Gatewood accompanied Woodson, then 17 and too young to buy firearms, to a Horsham gun shop, where he purchased a Glock .45 caliber weapon, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Woodson used the gun in the nonfatal shooting of a 15-year-old boy on July 4, 2021, in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood, prosecutors said. Minutes later, he and three other suspects unloaded more than 100 shots into a group gathered for a holiday barbecue outside a local clothing store at 60th and Sansom streets, investigators said.
The business’s owner, Sircarr Johnson Jr., and Salahaldin “Lala” Malmoud, were killed, and two other people were wounded. Malmoud, 21, was state Sen. Sharif Street’s wife’s first cousin’s son, but the legislator treated him as a nephew.
“A Fourth of July cookout is not the thing that you think about as a parent worried about your child getting shot at,” Street said Wednesday during a news conference at the DA’s Office.
In addition, Woodson went with Gatewood to purchase a pair of 9mm handguns in August 2020 at a store in Warminster. The teen used one of the guns to shoot up a party in Mantua, leaving a young woman hospitalized, prosecutors said.
The other handgun was transferred to two other gang associates, who used it in an attempted carjacking in Bala Cynwyd, according to the DA’s Office.
Gatewood also purchased two other guns for Woodson in Bucks County in 2020, investigators added.
Woodson has pleaded guilty to multiple counts of third-degree murder and other crimes and is set to be sentenced later this month. Gatewood, meanwhile, entered a non-negotiated plea for four counts of straw purchasing, one count of conspiracy and related offenses.
“It’s important to remember that the people supplying the guns to these teenagers are just as vile as the people who pulled the trigger,” Assistant District Attorney Bill Fritze said. “There’s no difference between a straw purchaser handing a gun over to a violent gang member than there is between a drug dealer handing a needle over to a user.”
Fritze and District Attorney Larry Krasner declined to specify their requested penalty for Gatewood, preferring to wait until his May 8 sentencing hearing. Gatewood’s attorney could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.
During the news conference, Krasner railed against Pennsylvania’s gun laws, which are generally less restrictive than nearby states. He particularly decried GOP lawmakers who don AR-15 pins and tout how guns make people safer, describing them as “bought and sold by the NRA.”
“There is probably no organization in the history of the United States that has done more to promote violent crime than the National Rifle Association. Get away from them,” Krasner added. “Money in your pocket for your campaign does not justify the blood on your hands, and that’s the truth.”
Street noted that gun control measures have stalled in the Republican-controlled state Senate, and he said he does not expect such proposals to be put up for a vote in the near future.
