Credit: Montgomery County District Attorney
A Philadelphia man has been convicted of attempted murder after prosecutors said he ambushed and repeatedly stabbed a security guard inside the Five Below at Greenleaf Shopping Center on Cheltenham Avenue.
Montgomery County Judge Thomas C. Branca found Truman Jermaine Parks, 53, of Fayette Street in Philadelphia, guilty of attempted murder, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, retail theft, and related charges stemming from the Dec. 6, 2024, incident.
According to trial testimony, Parks returned to the store after an earlier confrontation with the guard, put him in a chokehold, and stabbed him four times in the torso and once in the leg. The blade broke off in the victim’s chest cavity, with a fragment still lodged in his lung. The guard underwent emergency surgery and continues to suffer pain when breathing.
Cheltenham police officers rushed the bleeding victim to the hospital themselves, actions prosecutors said saved his life. “But for the actions of those officers that night, this would have been a murder case,” said Assistant District Attorney Kathleen Alane McLaughlin.
Surveillance footage showed Parks chasing the victim through the store as frightened customers, some with small children, fled. Parks fled the scene with the help of his co-defendant, Sydney Swain-Parks, 28, who has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated assault and was sentenced to county jail and probation.
Parks, who faces a potential sentence of more than a decade in prison, remains held in Montgomery County jail without bail as he awaits sentencing.
