Day after shooting at North Philly rec center, parents keep kids away. ‘You got a big playground. No one’s here.’

A day after a 15-year-old was shot on the playground at a North Philadelphia recreation center, the building was closed Thursday, the park and basketball courts empty and the playground deserted on a sunny day. Nearby residents, meanwhile, said they were worried about letting their kids go back out to play.

“You got a big playground,” said Richard Ferrell, who sat with some friends at the entrance to the Marie Dendy Recreation Center and motioned toward the field and basketball courts behind him. “No one’s here.”

A police patrol car was stationed near the entrance to the empty playground, but the previous day’s shooting had scared off the crowds of children who would normally flock there, he said.

Shortly before 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, a 15-year-old boy was shot in the back by an assailant who rode up on a bicycle and began firing, police said. The teen, who was not identified, was taken to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, where he was in stable condition. A gun was recovered at the scene, but police have made no arrests. Authorities have not released a motive for the shooting.

The gunfire came one week after city officials gathered at the park to tout new surveillance cameras to improve safety for children. Eleven new cameras at the rec center, on 10th Street between Jefferson and Oxford, were among 100 installed near 14 recreation centers across the city as part of an initiative called “Safe Play Zones.”

One woman who lives near the rec center said the new cameras, some of which were installed last week, initially made her and her family feel safe. But after the teen’s shooting, she said, she would not be sending her children back to the playground for a while.

Another neighbor, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, said he didn’t feel safe even with the cameras, especially because many shooters wear masks and likely could not be identified in surveillance footage.

Wednesday’s shooting was not the first at the center. In May 2021, a 19-year-old woman was shot at the playground there. The woman survived, but no arrest has been made.

Nearly 300 incidents of gun violence have occurred around recreation centers and playgrounds since 2019, according to the Parks and Recreation Department. Philadelphia police said the cameras would act as a deterrent.

Council President Darrell L. Clarke, who introduced legislation to fund the security cameras, said he was hopeful that surveillance footage of the shooting might help solve the crime.

“They got a clear view of the shooter,” he said. “The bottom line is if [the cameras] can play a significant role in ensuring that the perpetrator is captured and tried and convicted, it played a role.”

And yet, Clarke said, cameras do not serve as a deterrent for all.

”To some people it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I mean they’re not necessarily not going to do something because there’s a camera right in front of them. You see it everyday.”

Staff writer Sean Collins Walsh contributed to this article.