Man dead, 14-year-old boy shot multiple times in Philly

A 14-year-old boy was shot multiple times and a 23-year-old man killed Sunday afternoon in another episode of gun violence in Philadelphia.

The shootings occurred just after noon on the 5500 block of Pearl Street in West Philadelphia, near the Shepard Recreation Center.

The teenager was shot twice in the back and once in his right hand and was in stable condition at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The man died en route to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center with multiple gunshot wounds throughout his body, police said.

The shooting came four days after four family members, including two children – aged 18 and 7 – were also killed in West Philadelphia, the second quadruple homicide in that neighborhood in less than a year.

It also followed separate shootings last month that caught children in the crossfire, including an Oct. 20 case in which a 2-year-old girl died in her mother’s arms after a gunman fired an automatic rifle into the front of their house in North Philadelphia.

This weekend, a shooting on the 3000 block of Ruth Street in Kensington late Saturday had left a man in his 30s in critical condition, with gunshot wounds to the head and back. And just after 7:30 p.m. Sunday, a 35-year-old man was killed and a 35-year-old woman shot in the face and neck in a case on the 2100 block of North 28th Street in North Philadelphia, police said.

Police have not identified any of this weekend’s victims or said whether the 14-year-old injured on Pearl Street had been a bystander or a participant in the violence.

Though several neighbors milled around that crime scene even hours after the attack, most were reticent to describe what, if anything, they had witnessed.

One woman, who declined to give her name, pointed toward a gray Chevrolet Impala parked on the side of the street and said that the 23-year-old had fallen out of the rear driver’s side door and lay slumped against the car until emergency responders arrived.

Police later towed the vehicle, leaving a smear of blood on the sidewalk, two chalk circles made by investigators, and cut crime scene tape whipping in the wind as the only signs of the chaos that had broken out hours earlier.

Mary Gethers stepped over the stained cement and shook her head as she dropped off her grandson after attending Mass that morning. The priest had lamented the recent outbreak of violence in the city just that morning, she said.

“We’ve got to pray,” she said. “We have to talk about love.”

But when asked whether this block of Pearl Street had had problems with gun violence before, an officer leaving the scene simply shrugged and said: “It’s West Philly.”