Police looking into possible motives after 8 students were shot in Northeast Philly; SEPTA drivers shaken after string of shootings near buses

An emotional school board on Thursday night addressed a week of gun violence that saw 11 Philadelphia students shot, including eight Northeast High pupils at a Burholme bus stop.

“No parent in Philadelphia should send their babies to school and their children not make it home,” board president Reginald Streater said at a special action meeting.

Cavance Snaith, a junior at Constitution High and student board representative, played baseball with one of the students wounded in the Monday shooting that killed one Imhotep Charter High School student.

The students at Crossan Elementary, at Bingham and Bleigh Streets in Burholme, were outside preparing for dismissal Wednesday when gunshots began ringing out a few blocks away, at Cottman and Rising Sun. The school went immediately on lockdown, and children were hustled inside.

Mario Lopez, standing outside to pick up his daughter, a fifth grader at the K-5 school, was terrified.

“We didn’t know anything,” said Lopez. “It was so bad. You could see everything roped off when I got here, all the police.”

Northeast High held classes remotely Thursday, the day after eight students were shot at a busy bus stop less than a mile down Cottman Avenue. School will also be virtual Friday.

In online classes, attendance was stronger than one teacher expected. Students seemed to want to gather together, to share grief and fear with their friends and their teachers.

“A lot of them were remarking, ‘This is my bus stop,’” said one teacher, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal. “When I asked, ‘How do you feel about the prospect of going back in person on Monday, a lot of them said, ‘I don’t want to, I’m too scared.’”

Mel Seligsohn, 85, was riding a SEPTA bus on Thursday around 12:30 p.m. heading east on Market street to meet friends for lunch around Walnut Street and Third Street. He lives near the city’s Art Museum area and typically takes the bus a couple of times a week because as a senior it’s free, he said.

The recent shootings on or around SEPTA buses this week made him feel “sick” and “disturbed”, he said.

“It’s upsetting. Of course it is,” he said. “It’s enough.”

The blue Hyundai Sonata that police say was used as a getaway car in the shooting of eight teenagers in the Burholme section of Northeast Philadelphia Wednesday was stolen from a nearby block on Saturday, police said.

Philadelphia police responded to a report of a car theft on March 2, said Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore, when the owner of the Hyundai told police that his car was gone, and a new car was parked in its place. That new car, a gray Kia Sportage, had also previously been reported stolen, Vanore said. Investigators believe the thieves swapped an old stolen car for the new blue one — and that they then used that in the shooting Wednesday, he said.

Vanore said investigators are also processing the gray Kia in hopes of recovering evidence that points investigators toward the people who stole the Hyundai.

Philadelphia police are looking into whether the shooting Wednesday that injured eight Northeast High School students could be related to a similar spate of gunfire outside of Imhotep Institute Charter School earlier this week that left one teen dead and four others injured.

Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore said that it’s still too early to tell — and that there’s no evidence that suggests a connection at this time. Still, he said, investigators are looking into all possible motives, scouring social media and running down all tips from the public.

“We have received numerous tips… and they are corroborating information that we have that I can't talk about yet,” he said.

The men and women who pilot SEPTA buses through the city are shaken and terrified after the vehicles were involved in four straight days of shootings, three of them fatal, according to the leader of the union that represents them.

"They're out there by themselves," Brian Pollitt, president of Transport Workers Union Local 234, said Thursday.

For at least four years, the union has been speaking up about escalating assaults on operators of buses and trolleys, asking SEPTA management to do more to protect them.

Philadelphia lawmakers on Thursday expressed anger, desperation and, in one case, “powerlessness” following a spate of high-profile shootings this week involving public transit that left 11 children shot.

Several Philadelphia City Council members said during the body’s weekly meeting that they’re considering what legislation they can advance to continue to address gun violence. But several lamented that solutions — whether they be cultural or related to gun laws — are largely outside their control.

“I am feeling powerless and shrouded by a pull of desperation,” said Councilmember Anthony Phillips, who represents parts of Northwest and Northeast Philadelphia, including the neighborhood where Wednesday’s shooting took place. “This is a crisis at every level. It reflects an abject failure to protect our most basic social rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Raquel Lopez prayed all night and into Thursday morning for what she said happened just moments ago: Her 16-year-old son, Brandon, who was shot six times while waiting for the bus after school Wednesday, woke up and started talking.

Lopez, in a phone interview, said her son was one of the eight teens who were shot at Rising Sun and Cottman Avenues, an intersection called “Five Points” where many kids from Northeast High School catch SEPTA buses home.

Brandon was standing there Wednesday, waiting to catch a second bus home, when just before 3 p.m., police said three young men with guns jumped out of a stolen blue Hyundai and fired more than 30 shots into a crowd of students. Brandon, a sophomore at Northeast High, was struck six times, his mother said — including once in the chest and hand.

On Thursday around 10:30 a.m., Nicole Wood, 32, was heading back to her home in East Passyunk on a Southbound 45 SEPTA bus after a doctor's office visit in Center City.

Wood, who was riding the bus alone, was aware of the shootings that had happened this week and felt safe riding the bus despite the incidents.

“I still feel safe,” she said “I think partially because it’s the middle of the day. I think that helps. It’s not night.”

Philadelphia School District students affected by Wednesday's shooting will receive support from school counselors and mental health professionals.

Students from four Philadelphia public schools were involved in the incident, whether being injured by gunfire or witnessing the violence while riding public transit or standing near the Five Points intersection, said Jayme Banks, the district's deputy chief of prevention and intervention.

Banks said mental health support would be "ongoing" as students process the shooting.

At Burholme's "Five Points" intersection Thursday, roadways were reopened after Wednesday's shooting that left eight teenagers injured.

For neighbors, taking public transit was unavoidable — even as the gunfire marked the fourth instance of a shooting near a SEPTA vehicle in as many days.

Dana Meeks, 61, has to take the bus nearly every day to ferry his grandson to and from school. Avoiding public transit over safety concerns is not an option, he said waiting for a bus near Cottman Avenue around 9 a.m.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker on Thursday forcefully condemned a recent spate of shootings that left children wounded or killed and aimed to strike a sense of unity, saying her administration is working with law enforcement from Northeast Philly to Washington.

“We can do this. Don’t let anybody tell you that this is insurmountable,” she said during a morning interview on WURD radio. “We can survive this. It’s going to take everybody.”

Parker said her administration will employ a variety of tactics to address the violence and vowed that the Police Department would do everything in its power to arrest those responsible. But when asked if she would consider more aggressive measures — such as seeking assistance from the National Guard like New York Gov. Kathy Hochul did earlier this week —  Parker was noncommittal.

Philadelphia police posted video on social media Wednesday night showing the three shooters and their getaway vehicle before and after they wounded eight Northeast High Students at a bus stop in Burholme.

The video shows a 2019 dark blue Hyundai Sonata parking behind a Dunkin' Donuts at the northwest corner of Rising Sun and Cottman Avenues just before 3 p.m.

Three suspects dressed in dark clothes and all wearing black face masks exit the Hyundai and run toward the bus stop and immediately start shooting.

In the wake of the Five Points shooting, Northeast High will operate on a virtual schedule Thursday and Friday, Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. announced Wednesday night.

“We are devastated by this afternoon’s senseless act of violence at a busy SEPTA bus stop that impacted several Northeast High School students, leaving eight students wounded. Our deepest sympathies and heartfelt thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the Northeast High School students involved and to all of the students who witnessed this horrific event,” Watlington said in a statement.

And though Northeast will offer virtual classes, members of the district’s Emergency Crisis Response Team and the Office of Prevention and Intervention will be on site to support students with grief counseling and other emotional assistance.

Eight Northeast High School students were wounded — one critically — in a shooting Wednesday afternoon at one of the city’s busiest intersections in an act that left a SEPTA bus riddled with bullets just a few hours after the agency’s security chief vowed a crackdown on gun violence on mass transit.

No one on the bus or another bus at which shots were fired was injured, but the gun violence, which occurred at the “Five Points” intersection of Rising Sun and Cottman Avenues in the Burholme section of Northeast Philadelphia — less than a mile from the school — came after three fatal shootings near or on SEPTA buses on three consecutive days.

“Enough is enough,” said Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, speaking in the pouring rain at the scene of the Burholme shooting. She added that “we will not be held hostage” by the week’s surge of gun violence. Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. was also at the scene.