Gunfire from street kills woman in house

A Camden woman was killed Friday when gunfire from the street shattered a window at the rowhouse where she lived, hitting her multiple times.

Camden County Police responded to the scene shortly before 2:30 a.m., and found Consuelo Lowber, 53, in the home on the 1200 block of Mechanic Street, just north of the city's Whitman Park section, the Camden County Prosecutor's Office and Camden County Police said.

The motive for the shooting was unclear, authorities said. They also could not say whether Lowber was targeted.

She died shortly after at Cooper University Hospital in Camden.

Authorities listed Lowber's address as a home on the 1000 block of Louis Street, but a Mechanic Street neighbor said Lowber had recently been living in the Mechanic Street home where the shooting occurred.

The home functioned as a boardinghouse that served Lowber and others, the neighbor said.

A jagged gap of missing glass, the length of the window, was the only reminder of the deadly shooting. A woman who emerged from the house said she was especially unsettled that it was her birthday on which she lost her housemate.

The city has recorded 33 homicides this year, figures from the prosecutor's office show, compared to 41 homicides this time last year. The city had a record 67 homicides last year.

Authorities urged anyone with information to contact Terry King, an investigator with the prosecutor's office, at 856-225-8523 or County Police Det. Luis Sánchez at 856-757-7420.