Wounded 9-year-old boy is recovering

In the Grays Ferry neighborhood where 9-year-old Kameron "YumYum" Pernell was shot Wednesday night, gunfire is part of the auditory landscape.

The corner-store workers know not to open the door, and the families know to usher kids into a back room. They never get used to the sounds of handgun blasts or the smell of gunpowder that lingers in the air, but it has become unnervingly familiar.

"It is getting a little too routine," said a mother of four who asked, out of fear, to be identified only as Kat. "You hear the pops, you get in the back."

Those pops shook the neighborhood again about 5:50 p.m. Tuesday, when several shots were fired on Tasker Street near Taney.

Kameron was walking in the wrong place at the wrong time, according to police and his sister, Kiara, when he was hit in the chest by gunfire. He was rushed to Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania, where he remained in critical but stable condition yesterday.

"He's going to be all right," Kiara said yesterday afternoon.

Two teens who may have been the intended targets of the shooting also were caught in the gunfire as they stood at Tasker and Taney streets.

An 18-year-old boy who was shot in the left ankle and left hip remained in stable condition at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, police said.

A 16-year-old boy was even luckier. A bullet pierced his jacket, but he escaped injury, said Officer Christine O'Brien, a police spokeswoman.

According to police, three men in hoodies approached the two teens, and one of the hooded men opened fire. A worker at the nearby Shop and Save supermarket said a fight had broken out on a SEPTA bus three hours earlier and spilled onto the street at the same site as the shooting.

"You know when something goes wrong in the day, something's going to go wrong at night," said the worker, who asked not to be identified.

According to the clerk, his store was burglarized two weeks ago and two shootings occurred in the immediate area Friday night. The clerk was especially shaken by Kameron's shooting: He knows the boy, a regular customer at the store.

"It's always the innocent that gets the bad things," he said. "Innocents always get the worst."

Several surveillance cameras are in the area, but none was pointed at the scene of the shooting, police said.

Staff writers Dana DiFilippo and Stephen Zook contributed to this report.