Read the Inquirer’s live coverage for July 5, 2022.

Two police officers were shot and injured in front of the Philadelphia Art Museum while on duty at the city’s Independence Day celebrations on Monday night. The incident caused stampedes of people watching fireworks on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to flee what they believed was an active shooting.

Investigators were still seeking to determine where the shots were fired from, how many were fired, and whether the shots were intentionally fired toward police or the officers were struck by stray gunfire. Police said no one else was shot.

No arrests had been made and no suspects were in custody as of 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at a news conference outside Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

Each officer suffered a graze wound, one to the forehead — the bullet was found in the police officer’s hat — and one to the shoulder. Both were treated and released from Jefferson within about two hours after the shooting, which happened just after 9:47 p.m.

“We’re all just extremely grateful that this wasn’t worse than what it was,” Outlaw said.

It was a harsh end to a day and night of celebration on the Parkway, where Jason Derulo had headlined the Wawa Welcome America Party on the Parkway and revelers had filled the area for the first time since before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

» READ MORE: Two police officers shot on the Ben Franklin Parkway amid Philadelphia’s July 4th celebrations

— Justine McDaniel, Chris Palmer, Jason Nark, and Kristen A. Graham

The officers were standing in front of the Art Museum — between the steps and Eakins Oval — when they were shot, and they were standing relatively close to one another, according to law enforcement sources.

Investigators are still seeking to determine where the shots were fired from, how many were fired, and whether the shots were intentionally fired toward police or if the officers were struck by strays.

— Chris Palmer

Jeff Belonger, 55, of Fairmount, was working at a food trucks, Philly Fry, at 22nd and the Parkway, about 10 minutes from closing up for the night when police came running by with a terrifying directive to those sitting at picnic tables and chairs by the truck.

“Police said, ‘Get out, there’s a shooter! Get out,’” Belonger said in an interview just after midnight.

The Army veteran’s training took over as he urged people who initially continued to remain there to run.

“Some of these people were just taking video, not understanding that where these bullets are coming from they can hit you,” Belonger said.

He also ordered his five-person crew into the truck and closed the serving windows and doors.

They remained in there for about 90 minutes, as police conducted several sweeps of the area searching for the shooter and presumably evidence, Belonger said.

“The first hour was really intense because no one knew what was going on,” he said.

— Diane Mastrull

Asked by a reporter how concerned he was about big events, Mayor Jim Kenney said he always worries during large events in the city.

“There’s not an event or a day where I don’t lay on my back at night, look at the ceiling, and worry about stuff. Everything we have in the city over the last seven years I worry about,” he said.

“So I don’t enjoy the Fourth of July, I don’t enjoy the Democratic National Convention, I didn’t enjoy the NFL draft — I’m waiting for something bad to happen all the time,” Kenney continued. “So I’ll be happy when I’m not here — when I’m not mayor and I can enjoy some stuff.”

“You’re looking forward to not being mayor?” a reporter asked.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact,” Kenney replied.

— Justine McDaniel

The shooting caused chaos on what was “an otherwise really great day,” said Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, speaking just before 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday outside Jefferson University Hospital with city officials.

Mayor Jim Kenney said it had been a “laid-back, chill day.”

“The weather was beautiful, the concert was beautiful, but we live in America and we have the Second Amendment and we have the Supreme Court of the United States telling everybody they can carry a gun wherever they want,” Kenney said when asked by a reporter about whether people should be afraid to come to the city for events, referring to last month’s Supreme Court decision that struck down a New York law that limited the public carry of guns.

“We have to come to grips with what this country is about right now. We had a beautiful day out there today except for some nitwit… who has a gun and probably shouldn’t have had it.”

— Justine McDaniel

Both officers shot near the Parkway on Monday night were treated at Jefferson University Hospital and released, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said.

One of the officers was a Philadelphia Police Department highway patrol officer. The man, 36, suffered a graze wound to his forehead. The bullet lodged in his cap, a photo provided to The Inquirer showed.

“It is miraculous, the fact that the round stopped in his hat,” Outlaw said. “It initially went up inside, hit his forehead, and then the round stopped in his hat.”

The other officer hit by gunfire was assigned to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad, which works with Philadelphia police at events like the one on the Parkway. The man, 44, sustained a graze wound on his shoulder, Outlaw said.

One officer was discharged from Jefferson at midnight. He waved from the window of a police car as he rode away, a bandage over his forehead.

— Justine McDaniel

Two police officers were in stable condition after being shot just after 9:47 p.m. on the 2500 block of Spring Garden Street, while working as part of the security detail on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, officials said at a 12:20 a.m. news conference outside Jefferson University Hospital.

No arrests had been made and no suspects were in custody, Outlaw said.

Both officers had been discharged from the hospital and were in good spirits, said Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.

They were working on the security detail at the Parkway, where the Wawa Welcome America festival was happening, when they were shot. They did not hear gunshots, and police did not know whether the shooting was intentional or unintentional, Outlaw said.

“We’re all just extremely grateful that this wasn’t worse than what it was,” she said.

Outlaw asked anyone with possible information about the shooting to contact the police department.

— Justine McDaniel

At midnight, dozens of highway patrol officers rode down 10th Street toward Jefferson University Hospital and filed into an alley. Their colleague, grazed in the head, was being released. The officer, who was not identified, spoke to a woman through a window and waved to onlookers, before being led away by the motorcycles.

— Jason Nark

Shortly after midnight Tuesday, Philadelphia Streets Department workers equipped with blowers replaced the sound of helicopters after a shooting near the Parkway cut Fourth of July celebrations short.

Workers began clearing trash left behind by revelers as police continued to block any leftover foot traffic from 20th and the Parkway all the way to the Art Museum.

— Ximena Conde

When Irem Ozedmir and her friends heard about the shooting at an Independence Day parade outside Chicago, it gave them pause — but just for a minute.

“We said, ‘Oh, nothing’s going to happen here,’” said Ozdemir, 24, an au pair from Turkey living in Haddonfield. She and her friends had made plans to attend the Welcome America concert and fireworks, and took the train into Philadelphia as planned.

Shortly after the fireworks began, chaos broke out.

“We saw people running, screaming, saying, ‘Get out of here, get out of here.’ It was horrible. We saw people looking for their kids, screaming, ‘Where is my kid?’ Some people were having panic attacks. We ran,” said Ozdemir.

Ozdemir and her friends weren’t sure what was happening.

“An officer told us to run,” she said. “We got really anxious, and started running.”

They ran for blocks, then managed to hop on a train back to New Jersey.

Ozdemir comes to Philadelphia regularly in her down time, but the shooting shook her, she said.

“I’ve never been in a situation like that - it was really bad,” she said. “My friends and I were saying, ‘We should have just stayed home. We talked about how we don’t want to go anywhere crowded again.’”

— Kristen A. Graham

Residents inside the Park Towne Place apartment complex, four high-rise towers at 22nd Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, were locked down in the shooting’s aftermath.

“At this time, we have been informed that there is police activity on-site, throughout the community,” Park Towne Place general manager Scott Seeley wrote in a letter to residents. “At this time, we have very little information and ask you to please stay calm while authorities handle the situation.”

Zeynep Gunbay wasn’t home when the shooting occurred; she got as close as she could, and explained she was a resident of Park Towne Place.

“I begged the police to let me in,” said Gunbay, senior product designer at The Inquirer. “An officer said, ‘two cops were shot, park your car and go home quickly.”

Once inside her apartment, Gunbay turned the lights off and locked the door.

“I’m not going to sleep anytime soon,” she said.

– Kristen A. Graham

— Alex Dzomba, for the Inquirer

Around 11:30 p.m., several police officers stood in front of the Free Library of Philadelphia ready to help any families that might have been separated during the chaos of Monday’s shooting near the Parkway. But the area remained quiet save for the roaring helicopters above. Officers at the scene said only one family used the library as a meeting point.

—Ximena Conde

CBS 3 reporter Alicia Roberts was watching the fireworks, not working, when people began fleeing. They were standing back from the Parkway, staying intentionally far from the crowd because of the shooting at a Fourth of July parade near Chicago on Monday, she told CBS 3.

“Literally probably three or four fireworks went off and we all of a sudden saw this stampede of people coming down the street,” she said. “After that, we saw a wave of police cars almost driving down toward MLK toward 676, and then we saw a second wave of people. And it was in that second wave of people that you really started to realize something was wrong... People were visibly distressed, we saw many people kind of crying.”

People milled around until police began pushing the crowd away, saying everybody had to go, Roberts reported.

—Justine McDaniel

Meredith Edlow, 40, a freelance photographer for the Inquirer, was on the Parkway at 22nd Street as just a spectator looking forward to the fireworks when, within minutes of the fireworks starting she noticed a big crowd of panicked people rushing down the Parkway in her direction.

“People were panicked. People were scared rushing off the Parkway. They were holding hands, exiting off the Parkway as quickly as they could. I asked a police officer what happened. He said there’s an active shooter, you have to get off the Parkway. It was really terrifying watching all those people rushing off the Parkway.”

Edlow, of South Philly, said she had just been talking about the shooting at a Fourth of July parade Monday morning in a Chicago suburb.

“We’re a nation under a massive amount of anxiety, between gun violence at the event in the morning to gun violence at night. You really can’t escape it.”

— Diane Mastrull

Tracy Fairey, 46, and her daughter, Harper, 6, were watching the fireworks near the Franklin Institute at 20th Street and the Parkway when the crowd began to push back, screaming. When people began running Fairey took her daughter and hid behind a city truck.

“I figured it was safe, at least from getting trampled,” she said.

Fairey said people jumped over a wall, into the Frankin Institute’s grassy area. People were hiding In the shrubbery, she said.

“Some people were banging on the doors but they wouldn’t let them in,” she said.

— Jason Nark

As fireworks were still going above the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, thousands reacted in panic and terror amid reports of a shooting: Hundreds fled from the parkway in a current, while others ducked and hid.

People sprinted off the parkway, running for blocks in an effort to flee, videos posted to social media showed.

NBC 10 reporter Leah Uko said she had to take cover near the music stage, saying people were told to stay down and then told to run. She described taking cover as a “stampede” of people ran from the parkway.

— Justine McDaniel

Regina Hicks, 33, and nephew had found a spot near the stage when the fireworks started.

The show had already started when Hicks heard a commotion.

“We all just turn around and look and see people are running toward us,” said Hicks. “They told us that they were shooting.”

Hicks said people were running in panic. She and her nephew tried to get away from the crowds that were pushing their way out.

— Ximena Conde

John McNesby, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, said he was at Jefferson Hospital where the wounded officers were being treated, and that he believed both were in stable condition. Police on the Parkway, meanwhile, were responding to the “chaos” in an attempt to identify and locate the suspected shooter, McNesby said.

— Chris Palmer

Jeremy Kirchner, 19, was selling hot dogs at a stand close to the stage when he heard “pops” and saw people running.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“It’s a shooting!”

Kirchner said he started running too. When he saw others who couldn’t run, he said he told them to hide.

“I can’t believe this,” he said an hour after the shooting.

— Jason Nark

— Meredith Edlow, for the Inquirer

Following reports of a shooting during the Fourth of July celebration near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Philadelphia Police Department advised groups separated during the chaos to meet in front of the nearby Free Library of Philadelphia location.

“For those looking to reunite with loved ones on the Parkway, please meet at 1901 Vine Street in front of the Free Library of Philadelphia,” the police department wrote in a tweet. “All others, please avoid the area.”

On 20th Street and the Parkway, a sign told bystanders that public safety officials are investigating a “security incident,” and asked individuals in the area to “remain where you are.”

— Jason Nark and Nick Vadala

Two police officers were shot Monday night during a 4th of July celebration near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, law enforcement sources said.

A Philadelphia highway patrol officer suffered a graze wound to the head, and an officer assigned to the Montgomery County bomb squad was struck in the right shoulder, said the sources, who were not authorized to discuss a developing situation.

Both were taken to Jefferson University Hospital and placed in stable condition, sources said.

Additional details about what happened were not immediately available.

— Chris Palmer

Dozens of police cars were rushing through Center City toward the Art Museum and crowds were fleeing from the area after reports of a shooting.

— Jason Nark