Activists rally to stop gun violence after a shooting that left 7 people wounded in Strawberry Mansion
Community members held a rally and march in North Philadelphia. They called for Philadelphia leaders to give more money to antiviolence groups.
Pat Conley lost her son Jason Conley, 38, in a 2014 shooting in Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion neighborhood. In November, her grandson Khalil Conley, 22, was shot to death.
Her own experience prompted her to join a march against gun violence Monday afternoon, days after a shooting Thursday in Strawberry Mansion that left seven people injured, including a mother and her 2-year-old child.
“This has to stop,” Conley, 73, said Monday.
Conley and dozens of other antiviolence activists and community leaders held a community meeting and rally Monday before marching through the streets of North Philadelphia, near Temple University’s campus.
The event, organized by Reuben Jones, executive director of the nonprofit Frontline Dads, served as a call for more resources to combat Philadelphia’s gun violence epidemic. So far this year, 51 people have been killed in shootings, and 210 people have been wounded.
The rally comes four days after the shooting in Strawberry Mansion and a little more than a week after Temple Police Officer Christopher Fitzgerald was shot and killed in North Philadelphia, near Temple. Also last week, two teens were shot while walking home from school in North Philadelphia.
All the victims of the shooting in Strawberry Mansion were in stable condition as of Monday, police said. No arrests had been made, but the stolen getaway car had been found at Poplar Drive, near Girard Avenue, police said.
Shortly before 6 p.m. Thursday, as a group of four teenagers came around the corner of 31st and Norris Streets, three masked shooters hopped out of a silver Hyundai and started shooting at the teens.
At least one of the shooters used a gun with an extended clip, police said.
The victims included a 2-year-old girl shot in her thigh, a 13-year-old boy shot in his hand, a 16-year-old boy shot in his arm and leg, another 16-year-old boy shot in his arm, a 17-year-old boy with a graze wound to his thigh, and a 31-year-old woman shot twice in the left leg.
A 15-year-old boy shot twice in the chest and once on the right side of his body was initially reported in critical condition at Temple University Hospital, but was upgraded to stable.
“It does stir things up,” said Conley, who still lives in Strawberry Mansion. “It makes you angry, it’s just really upsetting. We can’t even walk the streets without this happening, and it can happen anywhere. It can happen anywhere. We’re not safe anywhere.”
At a short news conference in front of the Blues Babe Foundation on North Broad Street, where Frontline Dads is headquartered, Jones and other community leaders called on the city to give more money to antiviolence groups to take on initiatives such as installing better lighting in affected neighborhoods, cleaning vacant lots, and removing trash. Speakers included Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and mayoral candidate Helen Gym, a former City Council member.
The group of about 30 people, many of whom are from the 57 Blocks Coalition, named after the 57 blocks identified by an Inquirer analysis as the blocks where 10 or more people had been shot since 2015, then marched down Susquehanna Avenue.
The group marched through at least one of these blocks, the 1800 block of Susquehanna Avenue.
“Today we assemble as a community, as a collective, to demonstrate our solidarity to end the gun violence in Philadelphia,” Jones said. “We’re standing as a community saying ‘We ain’t taking it anymore.’ ”