Instead, one of the bullets found Peter McGettigan, a sophomore at Delaware Valley Vocational School, described by friends, neighbors and relatives as a popular, outgoing boy who liked to work out with weights and play with the three nieces who share the McGettigan home on the 100 block of East Wellens Avenue.
McGettigan was a boy whom neighbors on the block relied on to run errands and shovel snow, "a good-looking kid," his father said yesterday, "with a special girlfriend and hundreds of friends who've been coming to the house all day to pay their respects."
Yesterday, while the McGettigan clan - father William, mother Julie, brothers Billy and Johnny, and sisters Cindy, Lori, Meg and Beth - sorted through their feelings of anger, confusion and grief in the living room of the family rowhouse, detectives sought to untangle the events that led to young McGettigan's death.
Smith remained in police custody, held without bail after being arraigned early yesterday on charges of murder, possession of an instrument of crime and reckless endangerment. A hearing for Smith has been scheduled for Wednesday in Common Pleas Court.
From what Smith told detectives who interviewed him following the shooting, life has not dealt kindly with the Smith family, whose beige brick house shows signs of disrepair. Graffiti mar the steps and walls of the rowhouse and deface Smith's radio and stereo repair shop, 21st Century Audio Ltd., below.
Smith told detectives that his two oldest daughters, ages 26 and 23, are retarded, and his son, also retarded, is in Pennsylvania State Hospital.
Smith's house has often been pelted with objects, he told detectives. Rocks have been thrown at his wife while she was driving the family car, and firecrackers have been left on the windshield of the car.
