A student was shot and killed near a Southwest Philadelphia high school Wednesday afternoon.
Christopher Braxton, 17, was on the 2300 block of South 66th Street at 2:54 p.m. when a gunman opened fire. Braxton was shot once in the chest and taken to Presbyterian Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 3:20 p.m.
The shooting occurred near Bartram High School. The Philadelphia School District confirmed Braxton was a senior at the school.
No arrests have been made and a weapon has not been recovered.
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Bartram High School was placed on lockdown shortly before 3 p.m. due to the shooting. The lockdown was later lifted.
This was the latest homicide as Philadelphia deals with an uptick in killings. As of Wednesday night, there were already at least 39 homicides in Philadelphia in 2022, on pace with the same date last year.
A total of 562 people were killed in the city in 2021, according to Philadelphia Police Department statistics. Those killings were the most since the city began keeping track in 1960, and they eclipsed the previous record of 500 slayings in 1990.
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Hours before Wednesday's shooting, a bipartisan group of four members of Congress and Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw announced a $1 billion federal proposal to help reduce the city’s gun violence.
The Violent Incident Clearance and Technological Investigative Methods (VICTIM) Act (H.R. 5768) would provide $1 billion in federal funding over the next 10 years to help local and state police raise their clearance rates for fatal and non-fatal shootings. The funding would also help provide victims and family members with mental health resources and help with shelter, wage and relocation costs.
The city also appropriated $155 million to public safety in its last budget, including $16 million for neighborhood-based groups fighting violence.
However, Mayor Jim Kenney twice declined to issue an emergency declaration on gun violence, something pushed by both activists and fellow lawmakers as a way to clear red tape and expedite resources to combat the problem.
There are additional resources for people or communities that have endured gun violence in Philadelphia. Further information can be found here.
