It’s a weekend of celebration, fireworks, hot dogs, parades and parties, but it’s another year of blood! A dawn shooting Sunday at a party in Baltimore and two Monday night shootings in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Fort Worth, Texas have left ten dead and several dozen injured from guns in the United States for a year since another multiple shooting on Outskirts of Chicago. The weekend and bridge of celebrations of July 4th, the United States Independence Day, comes again full of violence.
Two people were killed and 28 injured, including many minors, in the Baltimore shooting on Saturday night. The one in Philadelphia, five dead and two minors injured. And that in Fort Worth, at a party with hundreds of people, leaves three dead and eight injured.
That Monday night, a heavily armed man opened fire in the middle of the street in the Kingsessing neighborhood of southwest Philadelphia, killing five people and injuring two minors, city police commissioner Danielle Outlaw said in a report. There is no known relationship between the victims and the attacker, who appears to have fired indiscriminately. Police arrested the 40-year-old suspect who opened fire with a rifle and was wearing a bulletproof vest.
All victims are male. Those injured by the gunshots are two minors, aged 2 and 13, who are stable, according to the outlaw. After 10:00 pm, police reported that one of the minors had been transferred from Penn Presbyterian Medical Center to Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, where the other victims were also taken. The ages of the three deceased are 15, 20, 22, 31 and 59 years. Four deaths were initially reported. The fifth victim, the 31-year-old, was shot several times in his own home.
The shooting happened just before 8:30 p.m. in the area of South 56th Street and Chester Avenue. The police received several calls and as they were attending to the first victims, they heard shots again from a man armed with a rifle who continued to fire in the area for several minutes.
The suspect was arrested in an alley without incident. According to police, he was wearing a bulletproof vest, several magazines of ammunition, an automatic rifle, a handgun and a police scanner. “Unfortunately, we have six victims here, but it could have been more if it weren’t for the agents,” Outlaw said, citing the “bravery and courage” of his subordinates.
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“At this point, all we know is that this individual decided to leave their home and target individuals,” Outlaw said. Bullet casings were seen on the 1600 block of South 56th Street, some of which were photographed by the Inquirer. According to the commissioner, there are about fifty of them in the area. A police spokesman initially incorrectly reported four dead and four injured.
According to the police commissioner, a second person is in custody who is believed to have reacted to the attacker with his gun. The police confiscated the gun as evidence.
“Appalled by reports of a shooting in Southwest Philadelphia. My condolences go out to the families and families of all involved and I send my prayers to the victims. My sincere thanks go to the Philadelphia Police Department for their courageous response and successful arrest of a suspect. This devastating violence must stop.” the mayor of Philadelphia tweeted, the largest city in Pennsylvania with about 1.6 million inhabitants.
Three dead in Texas
Authorities said three people were killed and eight injured in a shooting in Texas Monday night after a local festival. Around midnight, Fort Worth police officers responded to reports of shots being fired at a large gathering of several hundred people in the Como neighborhood.
Upon arrival, officers found several gunshot victims in a parking lot. Several gunshot victims were taken in private vehicles to area hospitals for medical treatment, while others were taken to area hospitals by ambulance.
The medical staff determined the death of a victim on the spot. A total of 11 victims of the shooting have been identified at this time, 3 of whom have been pronounced dead and 8 are in hospitals in the area in unknown condition. Ten of the victims are believed to be adults and the other a minor.
The new shootings come as police are still searching for suspects who opened fire during a weekend party in Baltimore that killed two people and injured 28 others. Authorities said many of the victims were under the age of 18. The circumstances leading up to the early Sunday shooting were still under investigation Monday. Acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley said it was unclear whether the shooting was targeted or accidental.
According to the Gun Violence Archive platform, there have been 21,689 gun deaths in the United States so far this year through July 3. The database records gun-related deaths for a variety of reasons, from accidental shooting, suicides to mass shootings. So far this year there have been at least 339 mass shootings in the country.
So far, in 2023, the country has seen the highest number of mass killings and deaths ever recorded in a year.
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