Philadelphia man charged with murder for the third time, Pa. Attorney General's Office says 9%
By Jillian Kramer11%
7/23/2026, 1:40:12 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 9 faulty reasoning types, including Out-Group Homogeneity Bias, Negativity Bias, and Fundamental Attribution Error, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 12.6% saturation with 51 hits. Analysis detected 333 faulty-reasoning hits from 405 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 26.1% and a BS Rank of 9% (19,916 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 91.00% of the article peer group.
A Philadelphia man has been charged with fatally gunning down another man three years ago on a North Philadelphia street, authorities said Thursday.
A grand jury on Wednesday indicted Richard Pridgen, 21, on charges of murder, attempted murder, and related crimes for the 2023 shooting death of George Smith, according to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office.
The case marks the third time state prosecutors have charged Pridgen with murder.
He is currently serving a 17-year federal prison sentence for a separate crime.
In a news release Thursday, state prosecutors said Pridgen is a member of the “Backblock” gang, a violent North Philadelphia group that has been at the center of joint investigations by the attorney general’s office, the Philadelphia Police Department, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for years.
Just before midnight on April 22, 2023, two people attacked Smith, 27, in the 2400 block of North 17th Street, state prosecutors said.
Surveillance cameras captured the killing, and showed one of the men — whom state prosecutors identified as Pridgen — firing multiple shots into Smith’s body before fleeing in a vehicle driven by a third person.
That vehicle, state prosecutors said, had been stolen at gunpoint the day before in the 2500 block of East Monmouth Street, less than four miles away.
The two other homicides Pridgen is accused of committing also occurred in 2023 in Philadelphia, state prosecutors said.
In one case, Pridgen is accused of shooting Hassan German, 31, and another man, who survived, on May 24, 2023, at the intersection of North Gratz Street and Susquehanna Avenue in North Philadelphia.
The details of the other case were not immediately available on Thursday.
“There are public dangers, and then there is Richard Pridgen — for whom killing, stealing, and harming people is a way of life,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday said in the news release.
Pridgen has pleaded not guilty in both prior murder cases.
A spokesperson for the Defender Association of Philadelphia, which is representing Pridgen in those cases, declined to comment.
In February, Pridgen was convicted in federal court of two carjackings and sentenced to more than 17 years in federal prison.
In the carjackings — which also took place in 2023 in Philadelphia — Pridgen robbed two men of their vehicles at gunpoint, federal prosecutors said.
Neither man was injured.
Speakers
5speakers80%attributed speech83writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageDave Sunday
33 attributed words10% of attributed speech0% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.