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Six injured in shooting at Kingsessing basketball game

Six people were injured during a shootout - one critically - at a local league basketball game attended by 500 people in the city's Kingsessing section Monday night, police said.

Friends and relatives gather outside the emergency room at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania awaiting word about the shooting victims. (Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer)
Friends and relatives gather outside the emergency room at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania awaiting word about the shooting victims. (Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer)Read more

Six people were injured during a shootout - one critically - at a local league basketball game attended by 500 people in the city's Kingsessing section Monday night, police said.

The game was being held by the Eggy Taylor and Pick Brown League, which is run by the city, said Recreation Commissioner Susan Slawson.

The victims were "innocent bystanders," Slawson said. One man was in critical condition.

The apparent target was among the bystanders. "It didn't have anything to do with the basketball game," Slawson said.

Police responded at 8:49 p.m. to reports of shots being fired at the Kingsessing Recreation Center's outdoor basketball courts and found three of the victims at the scene.

During halftime, a man entered the area near the intersection of Chester Avenue and 49th Street and became involved in a gun battle with another man, said Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives. All victims were adults, and one was a woman.

One victim was shot in the stomach and was transported by a medic unit to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in critical condition, police said. The two other victims found at the scene suffered minor wounds to their legs and were driven in a patrol car to the hospital.

Then, at the hospital, the remaining victims arrived by private automobiles with minor gunshot wounds, police said. A crowd of friends and family members gathered outside the hospital.

Identities of the victims were not available, but police reports said an 18-year-old man was shot in the leg; a 23-year-old man was hit in a thigh; a 19-year-old woman was shot in the right leg and foot; a 19-year-old man was shot in the left knee; and a 21-year-old was hit in the right leg.

Two other shootings that occurred almost at the same time elsewhere in the city left one man in critical condition. A man in a fourth shooting also was in critical condition. At 8:53 p.m. in the 800 block of Butler Street in the city's Hunting Park section, a 23-year-old man was shot four times during a robbery, police said.

A taxi transported him to Temple University Hospital, where he was reported in critical condition.

At 9:04 p.m., a 29-year-old man was shot multiple times in the legs in the 1600 block of Dyre Street in the city's Frankford section. He was reported in stable condition at Aria Health-Torresdale Campus.

In a fourth shooting, a 22-year-old man was wounded in the back when an unidentified person shot into the middle of a large fight in the 100 block of North Millick Street, police said.

He was reported in critical condition at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.