Man dies, 4-year-old girl is injured in a shooting in North Philadelphia

A North Philadelphia man died and a 4-year-old girl was injured Thursday morning in a shooting on the 1100 block of West Somerset Street, police said.

Relatives identified the man as Jerry Gooden, 32, and the child as his cousin Zylah McQueen. The shooting occurred about 11:30 a.m. outside the family’s home, police said.

Gooden’s aunt, Lynetta Young, said she was inside the home when her nephew, an aspiring rapper nicknamed “Tay," ran in, yelling that he had been shot. “I seen all the blood," she said in an interview Thursday. "I said, ‘Tay, Tay, come on, stay with me.’ ”

Then, she said, her granddaughter started crying. The child was struck by a bullet fired into the home after Gooden, who had been on the porch writing rap lyrics, ran inside, she said.

The child was shot once in her chest and left shoulder and twice in her left arm, police said. She was taken to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, where she is in stable condition.

“She’s good. She’s doing very well,” Young said. Her parents are with her, she said.

Her nephew, shot once in the neck and once in the buttocks, was pronounced dead shortly afterward at Temple University Hospital, police said.

Police have made no arrests and recovered no weapons but are continuing to investigate.

Young said she had no idea why anyone would want to harm her nephew, who moved in with her about six weeks ago, relocating from another part of the city.

“It’s like all so devastating because he don’t know nobody around here,” she said as she stood outside her home, where bullet markings marred the door and the red bricks of the rowhouse. “It’s crazy.”

This shooting came less than 24 hours after a woman who was nine months pregnant was critically wounded in a shooting in Kensington on Wednesday. Doctors performed an emergency cesarean section at Temple University Hospital, and both the baby and the mother were expected to survive, police said.

Lt. Robert Brockenbrough of East Detectives said police are still investigating the shooting.

Family members told police the woman was standing in the front doorway of her home with her husband, who was smoking a cigarette, while several children were inside, when they heard one gunshot. Chief Inspector Scott Small said police believe the woman may have been struck by a stray bullet.

Philadelphia is facing the highest levels of gun violence it has seen in years. There have been 428 homicides in the city as of Wednesday night, a 40% increase from the same time period last year and a figure that’s higher than year-end totals from 1996 through 2019. In 1995, there were 433 homicides.