2 women struck - 1 dead - in daylightshooting

BETWEEN THE SOBS that wracked her body, Tracey Burch tried to stand up on her own, but crumbled in the arms of a relative, her cries echoing down the block.

She and dozens of her relatives clung to one another as they mourned her daughter, Yavonne Burch, 27, a mother who was gunned down yesterday afternoon.

"Me and my daughter, we think just alike," Burch said as another relative held her granddaughter, 1-year-old Serenity, in her arms. "She was beautiful. She stayed to herself. She didn't bother nobody."

Police were pieceing together details of the shooting that also injured another woman, who police said is in her early 20s and might have been pregnant.

The shooting occurred just before 4 p.m. in front of a home on Ann and Weikel streets in Port Richmond. Police said Yavonne Burch was shot several times, including in the head.

Police weren't sure how many shooters there were - or who they were - but neighbors said they witnessed a man flee out of a back door of the home shortly after the shooting.

Burch was pronounced dead at the scene. The second victim, shot in the left leg, was in stable condition at Temple University Hospital.

As police marked the shell casings that scattered the ground, residents and relatives tried to comprehend what happened.

"She wanted good for everybody," said Burch's cousin, Modestine Smith. "She was the life of the family. She had everything going on."

Beside her, Tracey, Burch's mother, silently inhaled a cigarette while tears cascaded down her face. She'd been here before, she said. Her oldest son was killed in a shootout two years ago.

Now, her youngest, her "baby," is dead, too.