PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia Police believe that a car used by the gunmen who shot nine people Saturday night on a busy street had also been driven to and from the scene of another shooting nearby last month, officials said Monday.
Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said detectives were able to make the link after viewing surveillance video of both incidents — Saturday’s shooting in the Kensington neighborhood at Kensington and Allegheny avenues, in which at least two gunmen fired more than 40 shots toward a crowd, and a shooting around the corner, on the 3100 block of Kensington, on Oct. 7, in which a 27-year-old man was critically wounded.
Vanore did not say if police believe the same shooters were involved in both crimes, or whether there was a clear motive linking the two cases. But in both instances, he said, “there are at least two occupants of that vehicle that fire weapons.” He described the car as a dark-colored Honda Accord made between 2003 and 2007.
The update provided new insight into a crime that occurred at one of the city’s most challenged intersections. Vanore said Monday that all nine people who were wounded — eight men and one woman ranging in age from 23 to 40 — had been upgraded to stable condition; five had initially been hospitalized in critical condition, police said.
Still, a number of details remained unknown Monday. Police did not describe any suspects or say what may have prompted the gunfire. Vanore said it appeared that 41 shots were fired from at least two guns, and he asked anyone with information about what happened to contact police.
After the crime this weekend, some community representatives criticized city leaders for failing to address decades of systemic problems in Kensington, including an open-air drug market and the violence that often accompanies it.
Commissioner Danielle Outlaw on Monday sought to assure neighborhood residents that the Police Department was dedicating an array of resources to Saturday’s shooting, saying: “This is a priority.”
“We are working with every law enforcement entity that we have available at our fingertips to ensure that this does come to closure soon,” she said. “Not only for the victims, their families, (but) for those who quite frankly live in the community.”
Mayor Jim Kenney, meanwhile, said there was “no reason” that one of the guns used in the incident should have been able to fire dozens of rounds, seemingly without having to stop and reload.
“If it were a six-shot revolver, damage may have been done, but it would have been less instantaneous,” he said. “There’s not a purpose in the world for that weapon, other than to do what it did Saturday.”
