PHILADELPHIA — A weekend of sweltering temperatures in Philadelphia was marked by a rash of violence, including five homicides and a Saturday evening shooting at Penn’s Landing that left three 14-year-old victims injured.
The gun violence occurred across the city, from South Philadelphia to Lawncrest, and brought Philadelphia’s death toll to more than 180 for the year. That figure was tracking behind the record pace of killings in 2021. The pace in 2022, however, is 50% above the year-to-date average of homicides for the past decade.
Just before 11 p.m. Saturday, a 32-year-old man was shot repeatedly in an alley behind the 7200 block of North 20th Street in Logan. At 1:40 a.m. Sunday, a 23-year-old man was shot in the head in Lawncrest. A third man, believed to be around 30, was shot near 21st and Diamond Streets in North Philadelphia at 4 a.m. And, at 6 a.m., a 52-year-old man was shot twice in the chest on the street in Franklinville. The fifth victim, a 29-year-old man, was shot multiple times by four assailants on Sunday afternoon, inside a house on the 4900 block of Aspen Street in West Philadelphia’s Mill Creek section.
Eight people were wounded by gunfire over the weekend, some of them critically.
Two girls were shot in the foot and a boy was shot in the ribs shortly before 10 p.m. Saturday at Penn’s Landing, police said. The teens were in stable condition. Police said the gunfire interrupted festivities in the plaza, though they could not say how many people were in the vicinity when shots rang out. They attributed the violence to an argument involving another teen. No arrests were made as of early afternoon Sunday.
In addition, two 18-year-old men were hospitalized with multiple bullet wounds after being shot around 11 p.m. on the 1400 block of South 23rd Street, according to police. Around the same time, a 37-year-old man was wounded near 10th and Poplar. After midnight, two men were shot in separate incidents in Swampoodle.
In only one of those shootings did police identify a possible motive: an armed robbery. So far, no arrests have been made.
