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Crime & Justice

‘Please help,' Spring Garden residents tell city leaders after quintuple shooting that killed 2 men

There have been eight people shot in three separate incidents in Spring Garden this year.

The basketball courts at Roberto Clemente Playground, 18th and Wallace Streets in Philadelphia's Spring Garden section, are chained closed on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020. The playground was the scene of a quintuple shooting Wednesday night that left two people dead.
The basketball courts at Roberto Clemente Playground, 18th and Wallace Streets in Philadelphia's Spring Garden section, are chained closed on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020. The playground was the scene of a quintuple shooting Wednesday night that left two people dead.Read moreALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer
    by Julie Shaw
    Updated 
    Published 

After Wednesday night’s quintuple shooting at Roberto Clemente Playground in Spring Garden, a woman emailed City Council President Darrell L. Clarke and the mayor. “I am writing yet again, less than a month since my last email, to beg for help,” she wrote. “The situation on and around Wallace St. is escalating. 55 shots fired tonight. In a children’s playground.”

There have been eight people shot in three separate incidents in Spring Garden this year. Three weeks ago, the woman emailed Clarke after another Wallace Street shooting.

“The expectation is we should be able to walk our streets without being shot,” she said Thursday, on the condition her name not be used for fear of retribution.

Wednesday night’s shooting on the 1800 block of Wallace Street was “what we were trying to avoid,” she said. “But we’re here now.”