6 shot in West Philadelphia playground near zoo

Three women, two men and a 17-year-old boy were shot late Saturday night in a playground near the Philadelphia Zoo in what the police commissioner decried as a “senseless act of gun violence.”

Police said officers responding to a 9:21 p.m. report of a shooting at 38th and Poplar Streets in West Philadelphia, the site of the Clayborn Lewis Community Center Playground, found three female victims in the park — a 59-year-old shot in the left foot, an 18-year-old shot in the right arm, and a 24-year-old shot in the right thigh.

All three were taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where an 18-year-old male with a gunshot wound to the lower back also arrived, reporting he also had been shot at 38th and Poplar, police said.

Shortly after, two additional male victims — one 17, the other 18 — arrived at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, each shot in the left leg, police said.

The 17-year-old became the city’s 100th child shot this year, according to an Inquirer review of police statistics. About a half-hour later, an 11-year-old became the 101st, suffering graze wounds to the back of his head and right shoulder, police said, in the 6000 block of A Street near Olney Playground. He was in stable condition Sunday at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. And Sunday night, another 11-year-old was grazed by bullets and was in stable condition at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“We are devastated by the senseless act of gun violence that occurred tonight at 38th and Poplar,” Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said in a statement issued shortly before midnight. “These acts of lawlessness have no place in our communities; and I remain steadfast in that we will hold accountable those individuals who seek to cause harm in our city.”

No arrests were reported. The playground victims were in stable condition, police said.