8 high school students were shot at a busy intersection in Northeast Philly, the 4th shooting this week involving a SEPTA bus

Eight Northeast High School students were wounded — one critically — in a shooting Wednesday afternoon at one of the city’s busiest intersections in an act that left a SEPTA bus riddled with bullets just a few hours after the agency’s security chief vowed a crackdown on gun violence on mass transit.

No one on the bus or another bus at which shots were fired was injured, but the gun violence, which occurred at the “Five Points” intersection of Rising Sun and Cottman Avenues in the Burholme section of Northeast Philadelphia — less than a mile from the school — came after three fatal shootings near or on SEPTA buses on three consecutive days.

“Enough is enough,” said Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, speaking in the pouring rain at the scene of the Burholme shooting. She added that “we will not be held hostage” by the week’s surge of gun violence. Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. was also at the scene.

The motive for the shooting was unclear, and it was not known whether the students, seven boys and one girl, were targeted.

But the impact on young people and the city at large was “immeasurable,” said Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan, who also referenced the death earlier in the week of 17-year-old Dayemen Taylor, who was shot Monday boarding a bus after leaving Imhotep Institute Charter High School.

Northeast High is to hold classes virtually the rest of the week

Just before 3 p.m. Wednesday, police responded to a report of a shooting with multiple victims at Cottman and Rising Sun. In an Instagram video, the wounded, bloody bodies of victims can be seen on the wet sidewalk.

Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said video surveillance showed a car parked outside a Dunkin’, and when a SEPTA bus arrived to pick up waiting students, three people exited the vehicle and fired more than 30 shots at the students, who were all between ages 15 and 17. That SEPTA bus and a second one were struck by the gunfire.

Authorities said that four of the students were taken to Jefferson Torresdale Hospital, three were taken to Jefferson Einstein Hospital, and one was taken by private vehicle to Temple University Hospital-Jeanes Campus.

Police on Wednesday were searching for a stolen blue 2018 Hyundai Elantra seen in surveillance footage near the shooting. The car had a missing front grill, paper tags, and a Penn State license plate frame.

» READ MORE: Eight students were shot near a SEPTA bus in Northeast Philly. Here’s what we know.

Bethel said it was not known whether the shooting in Burholme was connected to the shooting Monday at a bus stop in the city’s Ogontz section that left Taylor dead and four other people wounded, including two women on the SEPTA bus.

Bethel angrily ended his news briefing when a reporter asked about the controversial practice of “stop and frisk,” in which police are authorized to stop and pat down a person in search of weapons or drugs. Bethel said this was not the time or venue for a stop-and-frisk discussion.

SEPTA Transit Police Chief Charles Lawson, who also was at the scene, said his officers would work on how to better police the daily school dismissals with thousands of students using SEPTA to get home.

As it happened, at a noon news conference, Lawson said SEPTA transit officers would attack gun violence on mass transit with strict enforcement of lesser criminal violations and regular searches of detained suspects for firearms.

That was in response to the third deadly shooting involving SEPTA bus riders since Sunday — the latest on Tuesday night on Snyder Avenue near Broad Street, when a suspect stepped from a Route 79 bus and fired a 9mm gun through the door, fatally striking passenger Carmelo Dreyton, 37, in the chest.

That was preceded by the shooting deaths of the Imhotep student on Monday and that of a 27-year-old man Sunday night as he was getting off a bus at Oxford Circle.

» READ MORE: Shots rang out as kids boarded the bus home from school, leaving one teen dead and four injured

In the last year alone, at least six teens have been shot and killed on or near SEPTA’s system — targeted while engaging in some of the most ordinary moments of life, such as riding the bus home from school or the subway to meet friends.

Law enforcement officials earlier Wednesday announced a number of measures aimed at curbing the gun violence, including “SEPTA checks,” with Philadelphia police boarding buses to talk to operators and look around, said Frank Vanore, the Philadelphia police deputy commissioner of investigations. Also, SEPTA plans to deploy more police officers on buses, especially in areas identified as trouble spots.

About 60% of the bus fleet is equipped with surveillance cameras, spokesperson Andrew Busch said. Those cameras cannot provide live feeds to the SEPTA control room in Center City, but footage can be quickly uploaded and has been helpful in solving a number of crimes, Lawson said.

But no police agency has enough officers or technology to guarantee that no crime will happen on the 1,100 buses that roll through SEPTA’s territory on an average day. And it’s not just Philly.

On Wednesday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she would deploy the National Guard and State Police troopers to patrol New York City’s subway platforms and monitor riders. Hochul said she would deploy 1,000 additional law enforcement officers who would check riders’ bags and monitor platforms for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

SEPTA isn’t going quite that far. In many ways, SEPTA vehicles have simply been swept up in the turbulence of their operating environment. Gun violence, abetted by easy access to illegal firearms, affects all corners of the city, Lawson said. He acknowledged that authorities are struggling to control it.

“That’s true in every jurisdiction on the face of the earth,” Lawson said. “We’ve got to roll up our sleeves, pin on the badge, and do the job.”

In addition to the three shooting deaths this week, there were two homicides and six aggravated assaults reported on SEPTA in January, according to the most recent agency data available.

The Five Points shooting Wednesday was a shock to people in the neighborhood.

Outside a corner store, a woman named Shena, who declined to give her last name because she feared for her safety, said one of the victims was her cousin. She said the boy was at the bus stop heading home from school.

“You’re shooting innocent people,” she said. “It’s devastating.”

Vicki Liu didn’t hear the gunfire from inside her kitchen and cabinet store on Rising Sun Avenue, but she was taken aback when a police officer told her what had happened. She perhaps spoke for the neighborhood when she said, “I see it in the news, somewhere else, but not on my street.”

Staff writers Jesse Bunch, Ximena Conde, Oona Goodin-Smith, Kristen A. Graham, Rodrigo Torrejón, and Nick Vadala contributed to this article.