Around 20 Shot, 4 Killed During Violent 24 Hours in Philly, Police Say

Some 20 people were shot – four of whom were murdered – over the course of a violent 24 hours in Philadelphia, police said.

The gunfire rang out across the city throughout Thursday and into Friday morning. The shootings included a double homicide in Southwest Philadelphia and another killing on the 400 block of Manton Street, officials with the Philadelphia Police Department said.

The condition of those who survived ranged from stable to critical.

The double shooting in Southwest Philadelphia claimed the lives of two 32-year-old men who were found laying near one another on the 2100 block of 67th Street, PPD Chief Inspector Scott Small said. The men were shot multiple times in the chest and torso, and police found some 13 spent bullet casings near their bodies, Small said.

The shooting on the 400 block of Manton Street killed an 18-year-old man after he was struck in the head by a bullet, PPD Officer Miguel Torres said.

There was also a triple shooting on the 400 block of Wallace Street in the Northern Liberties neighborhood. A 21-year-old was struck once in the hand, an 18-year-old was grazed in the head and a 24-year-old was shot in the thigh and arm around 2:05 p.m., Torres said.

A few minutes later, a double shooting on the 1700 block of North 31st Street in the Strawberry Mansion section left a 28-year-old man with two wounds to the back and one to the arm, and a 65-year-old man with two wounds to the thigh and two to his foot, Torres said.

Then, in the early hours on Friday, a 30-year-old was killed on the unit block of South Redfield Street in West Philadelphia. According to Philadelphia police, the victim was outside on the street when he was shot in the back. He was driven to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where he was declared dead.

Philadelphia police were left scrambling to various parts of the city as the shootings continued Thursday and Friday. It was yet another sign of the difficulty in quelling a gun violence crisis that has grown in recent years.

As of Thursday night, 132 people had been killed in the city, according to PPD crime statistics. Though that number is lower than the 145 killings seen at the same time last year – which ended with the most killings in the city’s recorded history – it’s still a higher year-to-date number than at any point since at least 2007, the department’s statistics show.

A tally by the city controller’s office, meanwhile, showed 116 fatal and 460 nonfatal shootings as of April 13 of this year.

The shootings have also reached dozens of children. The controller’s office showed gunfire killing 11 minors and wounding another 35 as of April 13. Several students on Thursday held a “die-in” rally in front of City Hall to call on city leaders to do more to quell the bloodshed.

The problem of rising gun violence is not unique to Philadelphia, however.

Data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive show that gun violence deaths more than doubled nationwide from 2018 to 2019, when such deaths totaled 39,572.

In the years since then, gun violence deaths have only increased. There were 43,658 such deaths in 2020 and 44,957 in 2021, according to the GVA. Thus far in 2022, there have been at least 9,669 deaths related to gun violence across the United States, according to the group.

Last year, President Joe Biden laid out a plan to combat the gun crisis, focusing on five key areas.

Those areas include stemming the flow of firearms used to commit violence; providing law enforcement with more resources; investing in community violence interventions; expanding summer programs and employment opportunities, especially for young people; and helping formerly incarcerated people re-enter their communities, NBC News reported.