Gunfire killed three people and wounded at least 11 in one of downtown Philadelphia’s most popular entertainment districts late on Saturday night, hours before separate shootings in Tennessee and Michigan left six dead and at least 16 wounded, authorities said.
The violence erupted as many, including Joe Biden, call on Congress to enact meaningful gun control measures, especially in the wake of deadly mass shootings last month in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.
In Philadelphia, police officers were patrolling the downtown area on South Street when numerous gunshots rang out, and they witnessed several suspects firing into a large crowd just before midnight, the city police inspector D F Pace said during a news conference.
An officer fired at one of the suspects from about 30 feet away, Pace said, but it was unclear if that person was struck.
“You can imagine there were hundreds of individuals just enjoying South Street, as they do every single weekend, when this shooting broke out,” Pace said.
At least two men and a woman were killed in the shooting, he said. Police later identified the slain victims as Kristopher Minners, 22; Alexis Quinn, 27; and Gregory “Japan” Jackson, 34.
The conditions of those who were wounded by gunfire remained unknown on Sunday afternoon.
Investigators processing the scene recovered two handguns, including one with an extended magazine, police said. No arrests were immediately announced. Pace said police were asking business owners to review video from surveillance cameras.
The department said on Twitter late on Saturday that people should avoid the area, which is home to nightlife entertainment venues, bars, restaurants and others businesses.
On Sunday, Philadelphia’s mayor, Jim Kenney, issued a statement calling the shooting “beyond devastating”.
“Once again, we see lives senselessly lost and those injured in yet another horrendous, brazen and despicable act of gun violence,” Kenney’s statement added.
Meanwhile, the shooting in Tennessee occurred near a nightclub in Chattanooga about 2.40am. Three were killed, 14 were struck and injured by bullets, and three were hit by cars while trying to flee the chaotic scene on McCallie Avenue, police there said.
The Chattanooga police chief, Celeste Murphy, suggested investigators suspected there were multiple shooters drawn into a dispute among each other, but detectives were still trying to figure out what sparked the gunfire.
“We’re trying to determine exactly what happened and what led up to this taking place,” Murphy said, adding that officers believed there was no active threat to Chattanooga residents in general as of Sunday afternoon.
Sixteen of the wounded in Chattanooga were adults, and one was a minor, police said. Six other minors were injured in a shootout the previous weekend in Chattanooga.
In another shooting early on Sunday, three people were killed in Saginaw, Michigan, authorities said.
MLive.com reported that police responded to a report of multiple gunshots around 2.30am. Two men were pronounced dead at the scene, and a woman died later at a hospital of her wounds.
Two other men also were shot. They arrived at a hospital in personal vehicles and were being treated for their injuries, according to a news release from the police department in Saginaw, about 100 miles north-west of Detroit.
