A violent holiday weekend in Philadelphia turned deadly early Monday morning when gunfire erupted on a residential block in the Grays Ferry neighborhood, leaving three people dead and 10 others injured, including two juveniles.
According to Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, the shooting occurred just before 1 a.m. on the 1500 block of South Etting Street, where officers had already responded that night to unrelated disturbances, including loud music and earlier arrests.
Bethel said during a press conference very early Monday morning that a team of officers was monitoring the area all weekend due to an earlier incident. While returning from a separate call, police officers heard gunshots and responded at 12:56 a.m. to the shooting on South Etting Street. At the scene, they found 13 people had been shot. Three adults died from their injuries.
The victims have all been transported to different hospitals in the area, according to the police commissioner.
Police believe there was an exchange of gunfire, though Bethel noted it remains unclear who was involved. One individual found with a weapon was taken into custody, but their exact connection to the shooting is still being investigated.
“This is coward stuff,” Bethel said. “You see the size of this block. Individuals just shooting randomly into houses, into cars, children out here. This is cowardly, wanna-be-thug stuff ... This is hard to understand why individuals engage in this behavior. But as we do in all our investigations, we will get to the root cause, and we will bring those individuals to justice.”
The Grays Ferry shooting followed a particularly violent Independence Day weekend in the city. Bethel said Philadelphia saw at least six homicides and a separate fatal shooting near Dickerson Street. Another incident near a South Philadelphia nightclub left at least eight people wounded.
“This has been a very challenging weekend,” Bethel acknowledged. “We are not going back. We’re going to continue to stay focused on these areas that have a significant level of violence. We are going to continue to deploy our men and women effectively. We are going to continue to address these challenges we see each and every day.”
Despite the spike in shootings over the weekend, Bethel said that the city has seen an overall decrease in shootings and homicides this year.
“We’ve been down in homicides almost 12 percent and down in our shootings close to 10 percent—down in much of our violence,” he said. “That continued to trend over the last three years.”
While the motive behind Monday’s deadly shooting remains unclear, investigators are working to piece together what happened and identify those involved. Bethel said that the police department will keep tackling the daily challenges the area faces, focused on progress, and committed to making the community safer.