Two killed and three injured in quintuple shooting in Cobbs Creek

Two men died and three others were injured Monday night in a quintuple shooting in Cobbs Creek, police said.

Naasir Boyd and Paul Cobb, both 24, were killed, police said, after a masked gunman in a white vehicle opened fire into a crowd gathered on the 300 block of South 60th Street near Delancey Street around 8:40 p.m.

Both men were shot in the chest and pronounced dead Monday night at Penn-Presbyterian Hospital.

The shooting happened near the 318 Bar, a corner property on a lively block of bodegas, take-out spots, and other small businesses.

Outside the bar Tuesday morning, neighbors traded details about what had happened in hushed voices, and police cruisers circled the block.

Tiffany Thurston, Paul Cobb’s mother, arrived by car and surveyed the scene where her son had been shot hours earlier.

“He was born and raised on this block,” Thurston said, holding back tears. “Whatever happened, that was my son, and he didn’t deserve this.”

Cobb, or “PJ” as his loved ones called him, was one of six children, Thurston said, and lived with family just a couple blocks away.

Thurston had expected Cobb to come home that evening, she said. Not long before the shooting, she called her son and told him she had left fried fish in the microwave and was headed to bed.

Once she was upstairs, Thurston’s Citizen app flashed, notifying her there had been a shooting on 60th Street. Soon her other son called with the news: PJ was struck by gunfire and had been taken to the hospital.

Thurston said Cobb was a “goofy kid” who sometimes got into mischief, though her maternal love never wavered. The family grew up in a rowhome on Delancey Street, where 318 Bar sits at the corner.

“He was a son, he was a brother, he was an uncle, and he was a cousin,” Thurston said. “They don’t understand how many lives they destroyed by this. I’m trying to keep it together for all my kids, trying to be strong, but in my head... I don’t know.”

Three others were also struck by bullets on Monday night. A 36-year-old man, whom police did not identify, was shot in the stomach and is in critical condition, police said. Two other men, ages 35 and 54, were shot in the leg, according to police, and were stable at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania - Cedar Avenue.

No arrests had been made as of Tuesday morning, and no motive for the shooting has been established, police said.

At least two other shootings have erupted in the 300 block of South 60th Street in the last year, according to data from the city controller. On April 23, a 26-year-old man was shot on the block, and a day later, according to the data, a 49-year-old man was shot. Both survived.

Late Monday night, blood pooled in the middle of Delancey Street, a block where businesses intersect with aging rowhomes with charming porches. At least 15 fired cartridge casings lay in the middle of 60th Street.

All was quiet save for the chatter of police surveying the block for surveillance video, and the whispers of about a half dozen onlookers blocked by crime scene tape.

Just as the crime scene unit was finishing up, an orange tabby cat ran across the street, weaving through the bullet casings before lounging on the dusty sidewalk and turning to watch investigators work. They chuckled.

If only he could talk.

Before Monday night’s shooting, 21 people had been killed in Philadelphia so far this year, according to police data.

At a news conference Monday morning, District Attorney Larry Krasner celebrated the number — an all-time low in “five consecutive years with every single year better than the year before,” he said.

Last year, there were 222 homicides in the city, compared to 562 in 2021.