What is drag racing? What to know about car meetups in Philly

Sep 16, 2023

Police shot and killed 18-year-old Anthony Allegrini Jr. at a drag racing meetup on I-95 in Philadelphia early Sunday morning.

The investigation into the shooting near Penn's Landing remained ongoing Monday, and Pennsylvania State Police declined to provide many specifics about the incident beyond initial details given Sunday. The timeline of events and details surrounding the shooting remained unclear, and Allegrini's friends and family questioned the police account of what happened. His family said he had been a bystander.

But officials spoke out against behavior by drivers who met up for drag races over the weekend — at Penn's Landing and other locations in the city.

Mayor Jim Kenney tweeted that those kinds of car meetups are "unacceptable."

"This type of reckless and aggressive behavior cannot and will not be tolerated," Kenney wrote. "Dangerous actions like these put everyone in our city at risk, especially our officers who work hard to keep our residents safe."

State Police officials and Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw also decried the meetups. Outlaw said Monday that her officers confronted several large gatherings of drivers in the city over the weekend, with reports of assaults, gunshots, and illegal street racing. She called it "totally unacceptable."

Here's what you need to know about drag racing and car meetups in Philadelphia.

Drag racing has a deep history everywhere from Philadelphia to Oakland, Calif., where organizers began pushing to legalize the hobby. Locally, hundreds of car enthusiasts with their vehicles and onlookers may meet at popular spots in the city to race and perform auto stunts. The gatherings can be organized or impromptu.

Meetups usually happen in Philadelphia without incident, with social media pages dedicated to the hobby, but sometimes drag racing has had dangerous results.

A person associated with the Philly Street Race Team Instagram who declined to give their name didn't want to speak about drag racing and car culture, but did say that "blocking intersections and highways to do doughnuts," are not affiliated with their group.

A Pennsylvania state trooper shot and killed Allegrini, of Delaware County, around 3:30 a.m. Sunday near Penn's Landing. Troopers said they’d found vehicles and onlookers blocking the highway, with cars doing tricks like burnouts and drifting.

Four people got into a car and struck two troopers, state police said, and one of the troopers fired a shot into the car and killed Allegrini, who they said was driving the car.

Videos on social media showed a man collapsed on the highway after the shooting, but state police declined to say Monday if that person was Allegrini or how he would have gotten there if he was shot while he was in the car.

Allegrini's family has said he was "just a bystander."

Burnouts are when drivers toggle between using their brakes and revving their engine in a way that makes the rear tires spin out while the car remains still. The result is smoky, squealing burnt rubber. Race car drivers do it before a race to remove "any nonrubber material" from the wheels, and after a race in showboating celebration.

To drift, drivers intentionally oversteer their vehicles at a high speed so the car slides sideways while the driver remains in control. There are professional championships for drifting that can be traced back to the 1980s, according to Red Bull, which owns a Formula One racing team.

Doughnuts are sort of a combo of the two, where drivers spin their cars in tight circles while the rear wheels do a burnout.

Drag racing and meetups typically happen on weekend nights into the early hours of the morning, according to news reports covering multiple instances in Philadelphia.

The gatherings happen all around the city, from North to South Philadelphia, Southwest to the Northeast. One former drag racing enthusiast told The Inquirer he and his crew used to congregate in Southwest Philly, on Enterprise Avenue behind the Philadelphia International Airport, or on Holstein Avenue or 61st Street.

Cars and watchers have also flocked to different corners of North Broad Street, and have gathered in Port Richmond.

Car rallies happen in the Northeast on Adams Avenue and Tabor Road, and sometimes have disastrous consequences. In 2018, there was a fatal crash at a drag race in Bustleton.

One of the most tragic incidents occurred in 2013 on Roosevelt Boulevard when a then-27-year-old man was racing another vehicle and struck and killed Samara Banks, a young mother, and three of her sons: Saa’mir Williams, 9 months; Saa'sean Williams, 23 months; and Saa’deem Griffin, 4.

On Aramingo Avenue in Port Richmond, 35-year-old Jose Caliendo was shot and killed and another man injured in a shooting at a race, and in South Philadelphia in 2015 a man died after crashing his Jeep Grand Cherokee on Pattison Avenue.

At a news conference Monday, District Attorney Larry Krasner said it's difficult to track down the people responsible for organizing and participating in races.

"When we are talking about … sort of flash activity that happens all at once where it's very hard to identify exactly who was there and people scatter quickly, that's a challenge," he said. "That's very hard."

The "racing on highways" provision in Pennsylvania law prohibits drag racing and applies a fine and six-month license suspension to anyone found in violation. Additionally, the statute applies to bystanders.

Under this statute, Philadelphia police can cite drivers and pedestrians participating in drag racing or like events.

In the fatal 2013 incident or Roosevelt Boulevard, Khusen Akhmedov, the driver who hit and killed the mother and three of her children, along with the driver of the vehicle he was racing, were both charged. Akhmedov was sentenced to 17 to 34 years in prison while the other driver, who did not hit any pedestrians, received a five-to-10-year sentence.