PHILADELPHIA — A 14-year-old boy was killed and four other teens wounded in a shooting after a football scrimmage outside Roxborough High School late Tuesday afternoon, police said, marking the 23rd shooting death of a child this year as Philadelphia continues to face a surge in gun violence.
Just after 4:40 p.m., Roxborough High junior varsity football players had left the field and were headed to their locker room when four shooters who had been waiting in a car parked outside the field jumped out and shot a volley of bullets toward the group of boys, police said.
A 14-year-old was shot in the chest. He collapsed at the bottom of the stairs that led to his locker room.
The boy was rushed by medics to Einstein Medical Center, where he died a short time later. He was a member of Roxborough’s team, but attended Saul High School, a nearby magnet school that focuses on agriculture, Philadelphia School District spokesperson Christina Clark said.
All the shooting victims were Roxborough players, police said.
Another 14-year-old boy was shot once in his left thigh, and a 15-year-old was shot in the leg. A 17-year-old was also shot in the right arm and three times in his left leg. All were rushed to Einstein and Temple Hospital, and were in stable condition Tuesday night, police said.
A fifth player suffered a graze wound, but did not require medical treatment, police said.
It remained unclear Tuesday night what could have led to the shooting, Walker said, adding that there have been no other recent incidents involving players on these teams.
It was also unclear just how many shots were fired, but there were more than 70 evidence markers throughout the street, noting both shell casings and bullet fragments.
Including the victims of Tuesday’s shootings, 178 children have been shot in Philadelphia so far this year and 23 have died. There were 213 children shot in 2021, a year that ended with a record number of homicides.
“There are no words for what transpired earlier tonight,” Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement Tuesday evening. “Another young life has been cut short and others injured by needless violence.”
Dozens of people visited the popular athletic field Tuesday afternoon for the three-way scrimmage between Roxborough, Northeast High, and Boys Latin Charter School. The junior varsity teams started playing shortly after 3 p.m., and finished up around 4:30 p.m., players said.
Boys Latin players were grabbing their gear and walking toward their bus, parked on Pechin Street, when they heard the pops.
”All I know is, it was a lot,” Miko Kinlaw, 16, a junior at Boys Latin, said of the gunshots. “Everything escalated so fast.”
Kinlaw and his teammates were a mere 20 yards away from the Roxborough boys, he said.
”We just started running. We ran all the way to the other side of the field,” said Justin Williams, a Boys Latin junior.
Kids jumped fences, Williams said, desperate to get away. They abandoned their belongings on the field. Shoulder pads and gear were scattered on the sidewalk Tuesday evening.
Once in a safe place, Williams used his coach’s phone to call his grandmother, Gilda Reid, who works at the Veterans Affairs office nearby. Reid jumped in her car and came as fast as she could, she said.
Players were temporarily held inside the high school, and their loved ones arrived to pick them up throughout the evening.
The boys were shot at the intersection of Pechin Street and Fairway Terrace, right outside of a collection of athletic fields and parks, and nearly on the school’s campus.
Chase Gallagher, 18, was hanging out at the playground adjacent to football field when he heard “pop-pop-pop.”
His reaction was immediate: run.
Gallagher lives in the neighborhood and attends Archbishop Carroll High School in Delaware County, where he plays football. He was shaken by the shooting, he said: “Roxborough compared to other parts of the city, it feels safer, but now it’s not. Hopefully, things get better.”
Tony B. Watlington Sr., Philadelphia’s new superintendent, rushed to the shooting scene, as did District Attorney Larry Krasner.
Standing with the visibly upset Roxborough high principal, Kristin Williams-Smalley, the superintendent said he was “personally disturbed by and quite frankly angry with this senseless act of violence.”
Watlington continued: ”Schools have always been centers of community, and will continue to be, so it’s absolutely unacceptable.”
The shooting at Roxborough High School “should shake us all to our core,” Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry T. Jordan said in a statement.
”It should be unfathomable to think a tragedy like this can unfold at our schools, or anywhere in our city, but the devastation wrought by gun violence remains cruel and relentless,” Jordan said.
Addressing reporters at the scene, First Deputy Police Commissioner John Stanford said the 14-year-old was “doing what students do: have football games at the end of the day.”
”It’s one of the things that we encourage our kids to do, and then for them not to make it home,” Stanford said. “There’s one family that their son won’t make it home today.”
He added: “We keep having these same conversations you know, day in and day out. Something has to stop. We’re going to work together to figure that out. But it has to be immediate because this can’t continue.”
State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, who graduated from Roxborough in 2007, wrote on Twitter that he was “absolutely devastated” by the shooting at his alma mater.
“Gun crimes are stealing a generation of young people. It has to stop!” he wrote.
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(Inquirer staff writers Oona Goodin-Smith, Ryan W. Briggs and John Duchneskie contributed to this article.)
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