A Clifton Heights man is in custody and charged with attempted murder in the Friday night shooting at the Walmart in Darby Township, customarily called the Glenolden Walmart.<\/p>\n
Armani Tyrell Waite, 21, of the 5200 block of Gramercy Drive, is also charged with four counts of aggravated assault, 12 counts of recklessly endangering another person, and one count each of firearms not to be carried without a license and possessing an instrument of crime in the July 31 shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Waite is not very good at this,\u201d Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said at a press conference Monday afternoon, noting the suspect had left his gun and car keys at the scene.<\/p>\n
That allowed investigators to very quickly match his vehicle registration to his state-issued driver\u2019s license and picture, and to compare that to the \u201ccrystal clear\u201d video surveillance of Waite firing the gun, Rouse said.<\/p>\n
![\"District](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/DTD-L-WAITE-01.jpg\")
District Attorney Tanner Rouse, center, describes the shooting and how investigators quickly identified the suspect. “It was pretty quickly apparent who we were looking for,” the DA said Monday at a news conference. With Rouse are, from left, Darby Township Lt. Craig White, Chief of Delaware County detectives Erick Echevarria, Darby Township Deputy Chief Corey Cooper and Darby Township Sgt. Lance Csanady. (ALEX ROSE – DAILY TIMES)<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was pretty quickly apparent who we were looking for,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2026 Very good job by Darby Township and by (the Delaware County Criminal Investigation Division) developing that suspect, but like I said, Mr. Waite isn\u2019t very good at this. He didn\u2019t make it too hard on them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Waite, represented by attorney Arik Ben-Ari, turned himself over to police Monday. Ben-Ari generally does not comment on open cases and did not return a call for comment Monday.<\/p>\n
Upper Darby Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt said earlier Monday that his officers assisted CID in serving a warrant on Waite\u2019s address Sunday morning, but Waite was not home.<\/p>\n
According to an affidavit of probable cause for Waite\u2019s arrest filed by Darby Township Cpl. Nicholas Pascale and County Detective Christopher Karr:<\/p>\n
Officers responded to the store at 50 N. MacDade Blvd. at approximately 7:13 p.m. for a report of a shooting and found a female employee suffering from a gunshot wound to the left leg.<\/p>\n
A review of surveillance video showed two Black males in a verbal altercation in the self-checkout area of the store at 7:10 p.m.<\/p>\n
One male identified only as \u201cY.D.\u201d in the criminal complaint lifts his shirt, displaying what appears to be a firearm tucked into his waistband.<\/p>\n
As Y.D. walks away toward the exit of the store, the other male, identified as Waite, produces his own handgun and fires three shots in Y.D.\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n
Approximately 12 bystanders were in the line of fire, including the employee who was struck.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had what appeared to be a relatively innocuous, relatively short verbal dispute with another customer right at the self-checkout line,\u201d Rouse said. \u201cAnd I want to emphasize, this is the self-checkout line. This is just about the busiest place in the entire Walmart. There are no less than 30 people around Mr. Waite. But as a result of this argument, he pulls out a gun and fires.\u201d<\/p>\n
Y.D. has a permit to carry a firearm and no charges are pending against him, Rouse said. He added that there was nothing about the interaction with Y.D. that should have put Waite in fear for his own safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was not threatening,\u201d Rouse said. \u201cMaybe the words spoken back and forth were unpleasant, maybe they were rude \u2026 but I will tell you there is no basis for him to say, \u2018I was in fear for my life.\u2019 He is the aggressor here, plain and simple.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rouse said Y.D. and Waite were never closer than 10 or 12 feet from each other.<\/p>\n
The victim was outside and was struck after one of the bullets passed through a glass door. Rouse said her injuries were not life-threatening.<\/p>\n
He described the incident as a one-off that could have taken place in any store nationwide, and said Walmart security acted quickly and appropriately.<\/p>\n
Rouse said the connection between the two men would be further fleshed out in the course of investigation, but they appeared to have some familiarity.<\/p>\n
Police radio chatter of the incident on Friday night indicated customers were fleeing the store as police from multiple nearby jurisdictions arrived.<\/p>\n
A man fitting the description of the suspect was stopped and questioned, but was determined not to be the gunman after police reviewed security video.<\/p>\n
There were conflicting reports of a description of the gunman in the chaos, but officers developed Waite as a suspect after reviewing video that showed the shooter was a thin Black male wearing an orange hoodie.<\/p>\n
Police also searched a nearby Shop Rite but quickly determined the shooter was not there and the focus of the investigation returned to the Walmart.<\/p>\n
The crime scene was eventually released and the victim was transported to a hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n
The firearm was recovered from the scene and is being tested against ballistics to see if there are any matches in other pending cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a remarkable act of violence and it is really extraordinary that more people were not hurt by this,\u201d Rouse said. \u201cIt was incredibly reckless, incredibly. This could have been an absolute calamity and the truth of the matter is it\u2019s his own ineptitude that kept this from being a whole lot worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rouse commended the response and investigation by all of the assisting police departments, which included Darby Township, Glenolden, Folcroft, Sharon Hill, Tinicum, Collingdale, Colwyn, Darby Borough, Aldan, Clifton Heights, Norwood, Ridley Township, Ridley Park, Prospect Park and Upper Darby.<\/p>\n
Waite was preliminarily arraigned Monday afternoon before Magisterial District Judge W Keith Williams II, who set bail at $1 million cash.<\/p>\n
Waite is being held at the county jail in Concord awaiting a preliminary hearing Aug. 11 before District Judge Steven A. Sandone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Clifton Heights man is in custody and charged with attempted murder in the Friday night shooting at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,2133,212,22781,182,139,28,210,147,149,148,150],"class_list":["post-259059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-darby-township","tag-delaware-county","tag-glenolden","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-dtd","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}