Three people were murdered and 15 others were injured in a mass shooting in Philadelphia on Saturday night, when a gunman opened fire in a popular weekend hangout area.
A 25-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man have been named as the victims.
The suspect was one among those hurt and is being treated for a non-life threatening injury at a local hospital.
According to an ABC Philadelphia source, officers arrived at the location shortly before midnight and found a male suspect firing into a crowd.
The suspect was shot three times by an officer. The incident resulted in no policemen being harmed.
Prior to this shooting, were nine separate shootings in the city between Friday night and Saturday. No arrests have been made in any of those incidents, reports CBS Philadelphia.
Inquirer reporter Max Marin described the location as “a popular weekend strip” in a tweet. Marin later tweeted proof of ‘pandemonium reaching many blocks,’ pointing to shattered car windows and trash cans that had been pushed over.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, not everyone who was hurt was shot. One of those being treated at a local hospital is being investigated as a possible suspect in the incident. He was shot in the forearm, although it’s unclear whether he was shot by a cop.
‘Lots of young kids out doing idiotic stuff, in the street & jumping on vehicles & then a guy in a hoodie pulled a gun out, 11 casings & 2 live rounds on the ground,’ one eye witness stated in a tweet.
A witness to the shooting, Joe Smith, told the Inquirer: ‘Once it started I didn’t think it was going to stop. here was guttural screaming. I just heard screams.’ Smith told the newspaper that when he heard the gunshots, his mind went to the recent mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde.
Smith was in the area at the Theater of the Living Arts, where the band Dying Fetus was performing.
In other parts of the city, Mary J. Blige headlined the Roots Picnic performance at Fairmount Park in Philadelphia.
The 50th anniversary of Philadelphia’s Pride events were also being celebrated by revelers all across the city.
This is the same place where one victim was injured at 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday after a female suspect fired multiple shots. In the shooting that injured one person in the shoulder, no arrests were made.
According to ABC Philadelphia, he was taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in stable condition.
Prior to tonight’s shootings, there have been 743 nonfatal and 188 fatal shootings in Philadelphia in 2022.
A pregnant woman was fatally shot in the head in the city’s Port Richard area the morning of the shooting.
The woman was 34 weeks pregnant when the baby was delivered successfully at Temple University Hospital, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.