Murder toll keeps rising

THE YEAR'S homicide tally continued to climb yesterday, with two homicides and a murder-suicide pushing 2012's count to 31 slayings in 25 days.

The bloodshed began shortly after 2 p.m., when police were called to 19th Street just above Wingohocking, in Logan, and found a 63-year-old woman with a gunshot wound to the head and a 34-year old man shot in the chest inside a home.

The pair were pronounced dead at the scene at 2:22 p.m. Police called it a murder-suicide.

Minutes later, a 23-year-old man became the year's 30th homicide victim when he was fatally shot in the abdomen while sitting in a brown Jeep Cherokee on Arch Street near 56th, in West Philadelphia.

Police said he was able to get out of the SUV and stagger about a half-block down Frazier Street toward Market before he collapsed.

Medics took him to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was pronounced dead at 3 p.m.

No arrests were made in the shooting as of last night.

At 7:35 p.m., police said, a 32-year-old man was shot once in the forehead during a drug transaction on Bridge Street near Torresdale Avenue, in Frankford.

Chief Inspector Scott Small said two men were seen fleeing south on Torresdale after the shooting, but a physical description was not immediately available.

Police were interviewing witnesses to the shooting last night.

Small said that no weapon or ballistic evidence was found at the scene, but blood and a hat marked the sidewalk where the man was found.

He was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead - becoming the year's 31st murder victim - at 7:59 p.m.