Afimag.com –
About four people were killed, two children injured in a mass shooting on the night of July 03, 2023, in the US city of Philadelphia following the latest country’s gun violence crisis.
The deceased were all males ranging from 20 to 59 years old.
According to Philadelphia police commissioner Danielle Outlaw, the two children wounded were aged two and 13.
The police have arrested the suspected 40 year old shooter who wore a bulletproof vest and was armed with a rifle and a handgun near the scene of the shooting in the city’s Kingsessing neighborhood.
Outlaw said, “I don’t know if he was firing the rifle at the time we were pursuing or the handgun, but yes he was actively shooting a firearm at the time our officers were pursuing.”
According to AFP, local media reports said four people had been hurt in the shooting, but Outlaw put the number of wounded at two, both children.
Local media footage showed police had cordoned off an extensive crime scene, which Outlaw said spanned at least eight city blocks.
“We have absolutely no idea why this happened. Like I said we have this person in custody and we are doing what we can to positively identify this person,” she said.
“At some point as victims were being shot, we have another person that we believe acquired a gun somehow… and returned fire in the direction of the shooter that we have in custody,” said Outlaw.
Monday’s shooting was at least the 341st that the United States has seen this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), with at least 21,696 people killed — including 12,144 suicides — so far this year.
The GVA defines a “mass shooting” as a gun-related incident in which at least four or more people are wounded or killed.
Last year, at least 44,357 people were killed in gun violence in the United States, more than half of which were suicides.
Over the weekend, two people were killed and 28 wounded in a shooting at a block party in the eastern city of Baltimore.
