Shooting outside Willard Elementary overnight in Kensington leaves three injured, parents shaken

Three people, including a 17-year-old boy, were injured in a hail of gunfire outside a Kensington elementary school overnight Wednesday, police said, leaving children to walk past a crime scene at their school entrance on just the third day of the academic year.

Earlier in the night, around 9:30 Tuesday, an employee of Frances W. Willard Elementary School opened the school to let about a dozen young people play basketball inside the gym, said Capt. John Walker, head of the Police Department’s nonfatal shooting unit.

About three hours later, shortly after the game had wrapped up, a group of three young people stood and talked by a car for about 10 minutes outside the school, on the 3000 block of Jasper Street.

But suddenly, at 12:46 a.m., at least two gunmen walked up and shot at the group numerous times, striking all three, Walker said. A 17-year-old boy was shot in the thigh, while a 20-year-old woman was shot in the buttocks. A 20-year-old man was hit in the arm, hand, and thigh.

All three were rushed in private cars to Temple University Hospital. The teen and young woman are in stable condition, while the 20-year-old man is in critical condition, police said.

Police recovered 30 spent shell casings at the scene, from a semiautomatic rifle and a semiautomatic handgun, said Chief Inspector Scott Small. A car was struck 15 times, he said.

One of the bullets went through a window of the elementary school and lodged into a lobby wall.

Walker said investigators are sorting through video footage and trying to determine whether something occurred at the basketball game that could have sparked the shooting. No arrests have been made thus far.

Philadelphia School District spokesperson Marissa Orbanek said the school would operate on a normal schedule Wednesday, with additional school safety support. Willard was locked down for evidence collection briefly Wednesday morning and staff entry into the building was delayed.

“We are outraged for our students, families, and staff that gun violence continues to impact our city,” said Orbanek, adding that they offered extra counseling and trauma support to Willard students and staff.

Ray Guzman, a staff representative from the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, was shocked to see a spider web-like bullet hole through the window of the school’s front door.

”This doesn’t happen on the campus. People feel like Willard, the school, the grounds, are an oasis,” said Guzman.

”People are very much overwhelmed, some of them visibly scared,” he said. “But our people keep on coming. This is their school, this is their community.”

Parents, too, were shaken, with some frustrated that the school did not alert them to the shooting and only learned of it through social media.

“They didn’t tell us anything and we think it’s absolutely horrifying,” Raine Candelaria, 35, said as she picked up her son, Jake, Wednesday afternoon.

When she dropped him off for school, the entrance was taped off as a crime scene, she said.

Candelaria said she’s looking into sending her son to a charter school in a safer area.

Jymer Sanders, whose 5-year-old daughter attends the school, said the shooting is “scary, but it’s out of our control.”

The early morning violence was one in a spate of overnight shootings across the city. Before noon Wednesday, eight people had been shot in separate incidents.

Frances F. Willard Elementary is in the heart of Kensington, and very close to McPherson Square Park, an area that sees a higher concentration of gun violence, largely driven by the open-air drug market.

Including Wednesday’s incident, 17 people have been shot — three of them fatally — on the blocks surrounding the school this year. Willard is one of the Police Department’s School Safety Zones and receives a larger police presence inside and outside the school both during the day and around arrival and dismissal times, said Deputy Police Commissioner Joel Dales.

Still, Betzaida Torres said she has asked her daughter’s first-grade teacher to keep the class inside and away from windows out of fear for stray bullets.

“These are our babies in here,” said Torres, 31.

Jerry Jordan, president of the teachers’ union, said in a statement the shooting is emblematic of the ongoing trauma facing Philadelphia children.

“Think of what that means to a kindergartner entering school for the very first time this week. Or to a parent or student who might know one of the victims. This type of trauma is unbearable,” he said. “The devastation wrought at Willard, including those impacted directly and every single member of the community, is emblematic of the ongoing trauma of gun violence in Philadelphia and across the nation.”

Staff writer Kristen A. Graham contributed to this article.