Six people were shot, two fatally, in a drive-by shooting on Labor Day in Hunting Park
A 33-year-old woman was killed. Two people remain in critical condition.
Six people were shot, two fatally, after police say two gunmen unleashed more than 50 bullets at a group standing outside a Hunting Park home early Monday morning.
Shortly before 1 a.m. on Labor Day, at least two men with guns in a silver vehicle drove down the 700 block of West Russell Street and ambushed a group of people standing on the sidewalk, said Chief Inspector Frank Vanore of the Police Department.
When police arrived, they found two people shot, and a flurry of shell casings. A 33-year-old woman had been shot in the head and died at the scene. Officers rushed a 31-year-old man who had been shot in the arm to Temple University Hospital, where he remains in stable condition.
Four other victims were taken to Temple, including a 19-year-old man, shot multiple times, who died at the hospital four hours later.
A 23-year-old man and a 55-year-old man arrived with multiple shots throughout their bodies and remained in critical condition Tuesday, Vanore said. A 17-year-old was shot in the leg and is stable.
Police have not released the identities of those who died.
What motivated the shooting is still unclear, Vanore said, and because many survivors remained in serious condition Tuesday, detectives were in the early stages of interviews.
But investigators, he said, do not believe the 33-year-old woman and 55-year-old man were the intended targets of the shooting.
“She may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Vanore said of the woman.
On Tuesday, West Russell Street was quiet, with roosters and ducks wandering the streets under a blanket of rain.
At the house where the shooting occurred, more than 20 bullet holes were visible on the front of its red façade. No one answered the door. The attached yard was home to goats, chickens, and a turkey.
Neighbors declined to talk, or said they knew little of the shooting or the people who lived in the house.
The shooting was one of many during the Labor Day holiday weekend, part of an ongoing gun violence crisis in Philadelphia. Last year, 562 homicides were recorded — the most ever in the city’s history.
So far, 2022’s pace is worse. As of Tuesday, 373 people have been killed in homicides, a 3% increase over this time last year.