Shooting near school and day-care center leaves 1 dead
Innocent bystanders were in the line of fire and Clymer Elementary went on lockdown.
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SHOTS RANG OUT next to a North Philly school and a day-care center yesterday, and police said one man was killed.
The crime scene just north of Lehigh Avenue stretched from George Clymer Elementary School at 12th and Rush streets to 12th and Somerset, a half-block away.
Two men were shot just before 5 p.m., police said. Cops took both victims to Temple University Hospital, where one, a 25-year-old man, was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the shooting. The other man, in his 20s, was fighting for his life after being shot twice in the head, according to Lt. John Stanford, a police spokesman.
No arrests were made.
Officers from the Crime Scene Unit combed the trash-strewn streets for spent casings and other evidence.
Two people were caught in the cross-fire but narrowly escaped injury, police said. Two bullets hit a moving vehicle, one puncturing the windshield on the driver's side and ending up in the passenger-side door, narrowly missing the passenger.
The school went on lockdown until police secured the scene.
One witness, who asked not to be identified, ducked for cover in his car as he approached the scene. He said he did not get a good look at the shooters but thought they looked younger than the two who were shot.
Toddlers were inside a day-care center across Somerset Street at the time of the shooting, police said.
Police planned to review surveillance footage from a nearby mini-market and from the elementary school.
Some investigators at the scene had just come from a vigil for slain Officer Robert Wilson on Lehigh Avenue near 21st Street.
Kevin Norris had arrived at the scene to check on his mother, who is in her 80s. The shooting took place directly in front of her house.
"If the weather was nicer, she would have been sitting outside," said Norris, who grew up in the neighborhood. He said the area has changed drastically.
"Back then, everybody had a job, and that was the basis for keeping the school system running," he said. "Now you got these single mothers and they don't know nothing."