Over 65 shots fired on busy Philadelphia street; 6 injured | Today Headlines

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Two gunmen fired more than 65 bullets in a Philadelphia street, sending pedestrians at night through a city block crowded with markets and restaurants rushing for safety and injuring six people, at least one of them seriously, police said on Friday.

Police responded around 11:30 p.m. Thursday in the Germantown neighborhood and found a 21-year-old woman repeatedly hit in the abdomen and chest and lying near dozens of used cartridge cases. Officers rushed her to hospital, where she was in critical condition on Friday.

Five men, aged 19 to 29, were taken with gunshot wounds by private vehicles to two hospitals, police said. All had to survive.

Officers are looking at the surveillance footage, Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters Thursday evening.

The injured woman, who suffered the most gunshot wounds, may have been the intended target, Small said. But the vast crime scene – with a sea of ​​shell casings on Germantown Avenue and bullets from at least two semi-automatic weapons of different caliber hitting parked cars – made it hard to be sure.

“The fact that we found over 65 spent shell casings – that’s a lot of shots fired – so it’s hard to tell who is the intended target and who is hit by stray shots,” he said. Small said.

A City of Philadelphia website that tracks shooting victims and homicides showed that as of Tuesday there were 1,827 non-fatal shooting victims in 2021, an increase of more than 600 from pre-pandemic levels in 2019.

Philadelphia Police recorded 559 homicides in the last day of 2021, the most recorded since the city began tracking in 1960.