Philadelphia off-duty police officer shot multiple times in North Philadelphia
Authorities said the officer, whom they did not identify, was shot near the intersection of West Pike Street and North 13th Street.
An off-duty Philadelphia police officer was shot multiple times in North Philadelphia on Wednesday afternoon, authorities said.
The 46-year-old officer, who is a 13-year veteran of the force, is expected to survive.
Around 1:30 p.m., the officer was on the 1300 block of West Pike Street when he got into “some form of a verbal altercation with a passenger that was in another vehicle,” Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at a news briefing outside Temple University Hospital.
The officer was shot multiple times in both arms, but “he was still able to drive himself here to Temple Hospital” and was taken into surgery, Outlaw said, adding that the officer is “going to be OK.”
“Quite frankly, we’re just lucky. We’re very, very lucky,” Outlaw said.
At the same time as the officer was being treated at Temple, a 40-year-old woman who had been shot in an unrelated incident was brought to the hospital and pronounced dead, Outlaw said.
The city reported 510 homicides as of late Tuesday night, compared with 454 on the same day last year.
Over the weekend, Philadelphia broke the record of 500 homicides that occurred in 1990.
A news helicopter aerial view Wednesday afternoon showed a white vehicle at the hospital with multiple bullet holes in the windshield.
The shooter was believed to be in a silver Honda and was still at large.
The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 has offered a $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of the shooter.
Jojo Cartison, 31, was inside the Rodriguez Pike Grocery on 13th and Pike playing a slot machine when she saw police swarm the block. Cartison, who moved from Florida two years ago and lives near the scene of the shooting, recalled other recent shootings and now doesn’t feel safe.
”I just don’t feel comfortable on my block,” she said, as she watched police comb the scene. “Children can’t be children and play because of this. There was another shooting on the block a week or two ago. This is not a civil area.”
One man, who said he had lived in the area his entire life, seemed unfazed by the shooting. He swept leaves from his porch, shrugging when asked about the gunfire so close to his home. For the man, who declined to give his name due to safety concerns, it was part of a citywide problem.
“It’s happening everywhere, Center City too,” he said. “Young fellas just got no guidance, full of anger. You can’t talk to them. A lot of them are high. People are just damaged in this world.”
Staff writers Anna Orso and Robert Moran contributed to this article.