Shawn Caddell, a 32-year-old deli worker, was shot multiple times inside Lee's Cold Beer and Deli on the 4900 block of North Broad Street on the morning of Monday, July 6, and died after officers rushed him to Jefferson Einstein Hospital. Nearly a month later, police arrested 29-year-old Hassan Coleman, who authorities say had walked out of state prison just two weeks before the killing after finishing a 10-year sentence for aggravated assault and gun convictions.
Philadelphia Police Department records show officers responded to the deli at 10:03 a.m. that Monday and found Caddell shot inside, according to Philly Unsolved Murders, which lists Caddell as a resident of Stillman Street tracked under police control number DC# 26-35-056551. As reported by NBC10 Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections confirmed Coleman was released on June 22 after serving the full decade-long sentence tied to his aggravated assault and gun case.
According to NBC10's account, Coleman is accused of fatally shooting Caddell during an attempted robbery at the deli. A witness told investigators he drove a man known as “Curry” to the deli and heard a disturbance in the back of the store, along with someone saying, “empty your pockets.” Homicide detectives wrote that “there is a brief struggle as the victim is emptying the contents of his pockets onto the floor when the offender fires six shots at the victim in his attempt to flee,” per the same NBC10 report.
How Investigators Traced the Gunman
The witness told police that Curry returned to the car armed with a handgun and admitted he had shot someone inside, the outlet's investigative team reported. Detectives tracked a car seen on surveillance footage dropping off and later picking up the suspected gunman, and police released surveillance images of the suspect several days after the shooting. The witness later identified Coleman from a photograph, and a separate anonymous source also identified him as the gunman, the station's report notes.
Surveillance video captured a man later identified as Coleman confronting Caddell and attempting to rob him, the outlet reported. Coleman was prohibited from legally possessing a firearm because of his prior aggravated assault conviction — under Pennsylvania's 18 Pa. C.S. § 6105, a conviction for that offense automatically bars someone from possessing, using, or transferring a firearm, making illegal possession itself a felony.
Harrisburg police arrested Coleman on the morning of Friday, July 31, roughly 100 miles west of Philadelphia in Dauphin County, executing an outstanding Philadelphia murder warrant, according to Local 21 News. Court records show Coleman was denied bail at his initial court appearance and is charged with murder, robbery, and other offenses, per the same NBC10 account. His attorney, Douglas Dolfman, said he was prepared to present a strong defense. Coleman has a preliminary hearing scheduled for August 31.
An Open Question Over Post-Release Supervision
Coleman entered state custody in 2016 through a negotiated guilty plea, and it remains unclear whether he was subject to any post-release probation conditions or whether his 10-year term represented a maximum sentence expiration that ended supervision entirely. Under Pennsylvania Department of Corrections procedures described by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, inmates who serve a full term to their maximum sentence date are released without mandatory state parole supervision unless a court explicitly ordered post-sentence probation at sentencing — state parole only supervises those released before that maximum date.
Hoodline previously reported the fatal shooting on the day it happened, before Caddell was publicly identified and before any suspect had been named. The 4900 block of North Broad Street sits within the Philadelphia Police Department's 35th Police District, which operates out of 5960 North Broad Street and covers a dense commercial and residential stretch of the corridor.
Case Lands Amid a Citywide Drop in Homicides
Caddell's killing came during what The Philadelphia Inquirer has described as historically the city's most violent week of the year, surrounding the Fourth of July holiday, though overall violent incidents over the 2026 holiday weekend were notably lower than in prior years. The Philadelphia Obituary Project documented Caddell as one of 15 homicide victims killed across the city in July.
Even so, Philadelphia's overall homicide numbers continue to fall. As of early August, the city had recorded 102 homicides for the year, a 24% decrease from the 135 recorded over the same period in 2025, according to FOX 29 Philadelphia. Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said the department's Shooting Investigations Group achieved a 40% clearance rate for shooting cases during the first seven months of the year, and city officials have attributed the broader decline to targeted violence reduction strategies and improved clearance rates.
Axios Philadelphia reported that the city is on pace in 2026 to post its lowest annual homicide total in more than six decades, a striking turnaround from the all-time high of 506 homicides recorded in 2021. Still, cases like Caddell's — a daylight robbery-turned-killing inside a neighborhood deli, allegedly committed weeks after the accused gunman's release from a decade behind bars — continue to raise pointed questions about recidivism, illegal firearm access, and how closely Pennsylvania tracks people once their prison terms expire.
