Top cop's protege is shot; says gunman a stranger

0 Comments | Philadelphia Daily News, March, 2006 | by SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM

Even the cloak of the police commissioner's guidance couldn't stop the top cop's protege from becoming another statistic.

There he was, Sylvester Johnson's one-time star pupil, lying in a hospital bed yesterday with an intravenous needle pumping morphine into his veins to numb the pain of a bullet wound to his upper left thigh.

Late Tuesday night, Christopher Reddick-Johnson, 17, became one of between 1,700 and 1,800 victims, many of them kids like him, shot annually in the city.

An unidentified teenage gunman shot Reddick-Johnson about 10:20 p.m. after Reddick-Johnson ordered chicken wings from the Mei Kuang Chinese-food store, on Arch Street near 61st, police said.

"I stepped outside, and this guy approached me," said the skinny teen in a weak...