Shooting at Cobbs Creek haven for teens

The gunman walked up to the car and leaned into the driver's-side window. After saying something to the five teenage occupants, he pulled a 9mm handgun and began blasting away, police said.

He was standing so close that the first two spent cartridges landed inside the vehicle. Six bullets hit the 16-year-old sitting in the driver's seat, and two other teens were injured, police said.

Twelve shots were fired, but none of the teens was killed.

The Thursday night shooting happened outside a place where West Philadelphia youths go to escape the streets - the Cobbs Creek Recreation Center - and might have been rooted in the most basic of arguments.

It was all over a girl, said Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives.

"One of the victims engaged in a fight earlier in the week," he said. "It just escalates to this."

Walker said detectives still were seeking witnesses to the shooting, which happened around 8 Thursday night outside the recreation center at Locust Street and Cobbs Creek Parkway.

The victims had been playing basketball at the recreation center before the shooting, but nothing happened inside that precipitated the shooting, Walker said.

"These are all neighborhood kids," he said. "They knew where to find them. . . . This is an area where kids congregate."

After leaving the recreation center, the five teens got into a Chevrolet Impala that belonged to one of their brothers, Walker said.

Police say investigators believe a 17-year-old sitting in the backseat was the intended target of the shooting. A 15-year-old in the front passenger seat also was wounded. Both were treated at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

The 16-year-old victim remained sedated and in critical condition Friday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He was hit six times in the lower body and was expected to survive, police said.

The two other teens - a 13-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy - fled the shooting uninjured, but returned a short time later. Police were able to interview them.

The gunfire came on the heels of a fatal shooting in September outside the Shepherd Recreation Center, also in West Philadelphia. A gunman opened fired during a pickup basketball game there, killing a 23-year-old man and wounding his 19-year-old brother.

In 2008, a 16-year-old killed a classmate at a North Philadelphia recreation center.

Recreation Commissioner Susan Slawson said the Cobbs Creek center "serves the community very well."

"It's disturbing when any of these incidents happen anywhere in the city," she said. "It doesn't matter if it happens in front of a vacant home or . . . a vacant lot. It's an issue wherever it happens, because it concerns lives."

The Cobbs Creek center was closed yesterday because of the shooting, officials said.

Sandra Jordan, a high school teacher who has lived across the street for a decade, said she had never seen such violence there.

She said the city had done a lot to improve the facility and clean up the area around it, and she was afraid the shooting might "tarnish the reputation of the center."

Near where the shot-up Impala was parked, blood stains were still on the pavement Friday evening, along with scattered medical gauze and the chalk circles that marked where the bullet casings fell.

Behind the center, Tyrone Brown was flying a kite on a ball field with his family.

"If I was concerned, I wouldn't be here," said Brown, 49, who was accompanied by his wife, Eleanor Brown, 42, and their 7-year-old son, Antwan.

"One incident shouldn't stop nothing," he said.

His wife expressed more concern.

"It's crazy," she said, "because this is a safe haven for children."

As for her son, she said: "He's not out of my sight. Where he goes, I go."

The gunman was described as a black male, 16 to 20 years old, who was wearing a dark hoodie and blue jeans at the time of the shooting. Anyone with information is being asked to call Southwest Detectives at 215-686-3183 or 215-686-TIPS.