Fourth of July shooting: 1 dead, 8 wounded in Southwest Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Nine people, many of them teenagers, were shot in Southwest Philadelphia late on the Fourth of July, leaving one person dead, police said.

Around 11:30 p.m., a patrol officer found a victim shot on the road, near the intersection of South 60th Street and Kingsessing Avenue, and called for backup. Responding officers found more victims.

“The officer immediately came over police radio and stated that she had seen a shooting and other officers responded and found other victims on the highway and transported them to the hospital,” said Inspector Kpana Massaquoi.

A 19-year-old was shot once in the face and died at the hospital . The other eight victims were treated at the hospital and are in stable condition.

They include a 24-year-old, a 23-year-old and an 18-year-old, who were each shot in the legs; a 21-year-old man who was shot in the shoulder; a 17-year-old boy who suffered a graze wound to the head; a 16-year-old boy who was shot in the thigh; a 15-year-old girl was shot in the foot; and a 14-year-old boy who was shot in the thigh.

Investigators said the victims were gathered on the street for a pop-up event when an SUV drove by and a man in the passenger side of the vehicle opened fire. Police believe they found that vehicle.

“At this point, there’s no motive whatsoever that we’re aware of right now,” Massaquoi said. “You have various crowds that are gathered here that officers broke up through the course of the evening and we don’t know if some type of argument broke out in those crowds or not.”

Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel says many of the victims were not even from that neighborhood.

“There’s only two young people who have this as their address. We have kids as far away as the Northeast, all the way up to close to Cheltenham Avenue,” he said.

Bethel says the gathering was planned through social media.

“Through their networking, they were able to reconvene and that resulted in an individual coming up in a vehicle, firing multiple rounds from that vehicle,” he said.

“Someone brought individuals into our area and someone saw an opportunity to take advantage of that.”

Massaquoi said additional patrol officers were assigned to the neighborhood to try to prevent something like this from happening.

Bethel says pop-ups are becoming a bigger problem in the city and they are doing what they can to break up the large groups — now, he says, they will be taking more proactive enforcement measures.

“We have a duty to stop this activity and we encourage the parents of these kids to engage,” he said.

No weapons were recovered. No arrests have been made. As with every homicide in the city, there’s a $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. Tips can be called in at 215-686-8477.

Exactly one year ago, a gunman killed five people in a random shooting spree in Kingsessing , not far from where these victims were shot. Police said they found that disturbing.

“It is very alarming, especially when we had officers in the area to prevent this type of thing from happening and it still happened, so we take it very seriously,” Massaquoi added.

To make matters worse, police said a drunk driver at the scene tried to drive around authorities as they were investigating but crashed with another car. No officers were injured.