Three suspects in the Grays Ferry neighborhood are currently wanted by authorities.
Downtown Philadelphia was once again rocked by gang violence after a shooting in the Grays Ferry neighborhood on Monday morning. According to police, three people are confirmed dead and three suspects are still at large. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said the shooting took place on the 1500 block of South 27th Street shortly after midnight. Ring surveillance footage appears to show the suspects open fire before fleeing the scene. Seven other victims were transported to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, and two minors – a 15-year-old and 17-year-old – were taken to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Both are expected to survive. One of the victims, a 19-year-old male, is currently in critical condition.
Police released multiple angles of surveillance footage and are offering a $20,000 reward for information on the suspects. According to Commissioner Bethel, the victims appeared to be firing at random, and did not make any effort to avoid the children that were in the vicinity. Bethel identified the shooting as gang violence, but said a deeper motive was unknown at the time. It’s also unknown if all of the victims were targeted by the shooters.
“This is coward stuff. You see the size of this block — individuals just shooting randomly into houses, into cars,” Bethel said. “I mean, this is coward, wannabe thug stuff.” One person with a weapon that was near the scene of the crime was taken into police custody, but it is not clear whether that person was one of the three that are currently on the loose. The shooting is far from the only one to strike Philadelphia’s inner city in recent months. Last winter, a man opened fire on an individual 21 times, killing him instantly near the Market-Frankford El tracks in West Philadelphia. Another shooting recently left a young girl injured in north Philadelphia. As it is, there have been 6,962 total violent crimes in Philadelphia, a 4% increase from last year.
Tyrique Glasgow, executive director of the Young Chances Foundation, called the shooting “past frustrating.” Glasgow said the foundation is aimed at giving young men from underprivileged neighborhoods opportunities outside of gangs. Glasgow also confirmed several of the victims were associated with the foundation.
“They are working to get jobs and going to vocational school, and to have their lives stopped by gun violence is something that is frustrating and painful,” he said. He noted that violence was on the rise in Philadelphia, and called on the community to come together to help clean up the neighborhood and offer more opportunities for young people.
Commissioner Bethel said that 46 people were shot in total from Thursday morning to Monday evening in Philadelphia, which was not the deadliest weekend on record in the city. Bethel said that police were also investigating a shooting at a South Philadelphia bar that reportedly left eight people injured.
Fox News reported that the gathering on Grays Farry was a 4th of July event and happened near a residential area of the neighborhood. The video released from the shooting shows several people nearby on a park bench begin running for cover after the shots broke out. Once police arrived, most pedestrians and the likely perpetrators had fled. Footage from a nearby Ring doorbell appeared to show at least one of the suspects using a semi-automatic handgun and firing wildly into the crowd and at nearby pedestrians. It’s also not currently known the gang affiliations of the shooters.
