A suspect was arrested in murder and sexual assault at a West Oak Lane beauty salon
Jamal Pistoria was taken into custody on a SEPTA bus early Friday morning.
The 33-year-old Philadelphia man wanted for attacking three women at random inside a West Oak Lane beauty salon, locking them in a back room, then shooting and killing one and sexually assaulting another, was arrested Friday morning.
Jamal Pistoria was expected to be charged with murder, attempted murder, sexual assault, and related crimes after police said he walked into ABBA Blessed Beauty Salon Monday afternoon and held three women at gunpoint in a back room.
Philadelphia Police Department officers arrested Pistoria on a SEPTA bus on the 500 block of South Broad Street at about 1 a.m., according to a SEPTA spokesperson. A bus passenger recognized Pistoria when he boarded at Lehigh Avenue and Broad Street and called 911, providing the route and bus numbers, police said.
“It happened without incident,” Philadelphia Police Department Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom said at a news conference Friday. “It was swift, and they did their jobs appropriately.”
Ransom declined to elaborate, citing the active investigation.
Prosecutors said Pistoria did not know the women and appeared to target the store at random. He locked the victims, ages 33, 34, and 44, in a room at the back of the business, and pistol-whipped and beat them.
He sexually assaulted one of the women, while continuing to beat the others, and then, suddenly, he shot one woman — 34-year-old Bellaniri Ofelia Hernandez Camilo — multiple times, killing her.
“She doesn’t appear to engage him at all whatsoever. She doesn’t appear to fight back. He just decides to shoot her,” Assistant District Attorney Jeff Hojnowski, head of the homicide unit at the district attorney’s office, said earlier this week.
Pistoria assaulted the women for six minutes, he said, beating and hitting them with his gun and continuing the sexual assault, Hojnowski said.
Then, with their colleague bleeding beside them, the two women, realizing Pistoria had run out of bullets, fought back and were able to overcome him, the prosecutor said.
He took a small amount of money from the cash register as he fled the store, prosecutors said. Detectives recovered footage of him buying a soda from a corner store, his face uncovered, shortly after the attack, officials said.
Court records show that, in 2009, when Pistoria was 16, he was adjudicated delinquent on charges of rape by forcible compulsion and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
In 2016, Pistoria was charged with burglary, robbery, making threats, and drug possession in Montgomery County. He pleaded guilty to a single count of criminal trespassing the following year, and was sentenced to two to four years in prison, the records show.
Ransom declined to comment on Pistoria’s criminal history. He said Pistoria’s arrest was a testament to Philadelphia citizens’ concerns with crime.
Between Monday and the time Pistoria was apprehended, the tip hotline received “numerous calls” about him, according to Ransom. The bus rider’s tip was quick enough for police to act.
“We tip our hats off to him or her, and we commend them,” Ransom said.
Hernandez Camilo’s family breathed a sigh of relief at the news of the arrest, having feared for their safety. They said she came to the United States with dreams of saving enough to build a dream home she could pass on to her two young children in her native Dominican Republic.
Francis Acosta Santos, her husband of more than a decade, vowed to keep her dream alive as he tried to keep a brave face for the children, ages 8 and 12.
An arrest wouldn’t bring his beloved wife back, but he vowed to get justice in her name.
“Now we have to fight to ensure he receives the maximum punishment from the state,” he said.
