1 dead in quadruple shooting in Overbrook Park

A quadruple shooting in the city’s Overbrook Park section Thursday afternoon left one man dead, three clinging to life, and a neighborhood shaken, police said.

The city’s latest round of bloodshed drew Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and stunned onlookers, including a mother who said a bullet ripped through her 12-year-old son’s second-floor bedroom, where he’s been attending virtual classes since the coronavirus shuttered schools.

“Had he been sitting there he would have been shot in the neck,” said the mother, who gave her name as Kristina G, 39.

“I’ve lived here four to five years. It’s never been this close, ever. I’m ready to move. If my son can’t sit and attend school without flying bullets, I’m ready to go. I’m a parent,” she said before taking investigators inside her Woodcrest Avenue home to view the damage.

The gunfire erupted just after 3 p.m. in the parking lot of a condominium building on the 1400 block of North 76th Street.

All four victims were driven in private vehicles to Lankenau Medical Center, where a 24-year-old man was pronounced dead at 3:12, police said. The other victims — a 16-year-old boy, and two men, ages 19 and 30 — were listed in critical condition.

Commissioner Outlaw decried the violence, and said police are still trying to learn the motive for the shootings and the identity of who pulled the trigger.

“This is an area that kind of caught us off guard as far as shootings and violent crimes,” Outlaw said. “We do know that at some point in time this parking lot might have been a location where stolen cars were put. But we hadn’t had any experience with violent crime.”

Outlaw said that while cold weather did not slow the pace of shootings, the concern now is that warmer weather could make the situation even worse.

“We are seeing over the last few days more people outside and more people willing to come together and congregate because of the nice weather. So, we’re doing everything that we can to partner with our grassroots community organizers, these folks that we know have boots on the ground. We have to stay ahead of it.”

There have been 93 homicides in the city this year, more than 30% higher than at this time last year, according to Police Department statistics.

A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said the part of the parking lot where the shooting took place is a regular gathering spot for young men and teens who often spend hours leaning against the wall and moving from parked car to parked car.

Another neighbor, an elderly woman who declined to give her name, said she still felt safe in the community, which is composed of brick rowhouses that surround the three-building condo complex where the shooting happened. “I ran to the window when I heard the shots, then my son said don’t get in the window,” she said.

“It was quite a few shots. I think it’s horrible,” she added.