Victims: Young Black Men From Poorer Areas. Method: Gunshot. In Phila., A Pattern Of Murder Statistics, A Common Thread

Of the 414 people murdered in Philadelphia last year, two were killed in Center City. A security guard at a Rite Aid near 16th and Chestnut strangled the assistant manager with a necktie and fled with $5,000. A homeless man was stabbed to death during an argument at Broad and Arch.

Two and a half miles north in Fairhill - a neighborhood with half the population of Center City - 23 people were murdered in 1996. Most of the victims were young men gunned down during arguments on narrow streets of ramshackle rowhouses. Drugs often played a role.

The difference between Fairhill and Center City reflects the larger pattern of murder in Philadelphia.

Murder is not stalking all of us. The killers are returning again and again to the same tiny pool of victims - primarily young black men in the city's poorest neighborhoods. And bucking a national trend, the victims are increasingly dying at the point of a gun.

An Inquirer analysis of Police Department data shows that:

* Black men age 15 to 29 are being killed in Philadelphia at a rate more than 30 times the average for all Americans. Last year, 166 African Americans in that age group were murdered in the city - 40 percent of all victims. That works out to 241 per 100,000 people. The murder rate for the other 95 percent of Philadelphians was 17 per 100,000. The national rate is about 8 per 100,000.

* People in Fairhill, Mantua, Hunting Park, Point Breeze and other crowded, low-income neighborhoods live with murder rates 8, 9, or 10 times the national figure. But nearly a third of the city's population live in neighborhoods - such as Chestnut Hill and most of Northeast Philadelphia - where the rate is dramatically below the nationwide average, and comparable to many suburban towns.

* There has been a relentless rise in gunshot deaths in Philadelphia. While gun murders fell 11 percent across the nation between 1994 and 1995, in Philadelphia they rose 16 percent. Last year, 8 out of 10 homicide victims in the city died from bullet wounds, the highest rate ever. Of the young black men who were murdered, 94 percent were killed with guns.

* Philadelphia's ``clearance'' rate, the percentage of murder cases in which police make an arrest, is above the national average. Still, like the national rate, it is dropping. Last year, 70 percent of the city's murders were deemed solved by detectives, down from 80 percent in 1990. Nationwide, about half of all cases were solved last year.