At least nine people were wounded in a mass shooting in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood Saturday night, police said.
Philadelphia Police Department Inspector D.F. Pace said the victims were shot near Kensington and Allegheny avenues, adding that there are likely more victims than the initial nine. Two were in critical condition and seven were stable, Deputy Police Commissioner John Stanford said.
The shooting happened around 10:45 p.m. outside a bar in the area, Pace said. The gunmen got out of a black vehicle and opened fire on a crowd on the sidewalk before getting back in the vehicle and fleeing, Stanford said.
There were police officers in the area who heard the gunshots, he noted. “Our men and women are where they’re supposed to be in the sense of being out here patrolling, but we have some brazen individuals in this city that don’t care. They don’t care how many police officers are out here, and some of them don’t care in terms of how many people are out here,” the deputy police commissioner said.
Police did not immediately make an arrest, nor could they immediately determine a motive.
NBC10 spoke with state Rep. Amen Brown, a Democrat who represents West Philadelphia, who said he received a call “from the chief” and got out of bed to get to the scene of the shooting.
Brown laid blame for the city’s gun violence on Mayor Jim Kenney, the office of District Attorney Larry Krasner and “weak City Council members.” “Innocent women and children are dying every single day, and it’s got to stop,” Brown said, adding that solutions will only be found with legislators working across party lines.
As of Saturday night, the PPD had recorded at least 447 homicides in the city. At least 417 of those killings were committed with guns, according to a city controller’s office tally, which was last updated Nov. 3.
This is a developing story and will be updated.