Three people were killed and 11 others were injured in a mass shooting in Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon after a gunman opened fire on a large crowd.
Police said several shots were fired shortly before midnight in the busy downtown South Street area with reports of “several gunmen” at the scene.
A police officer responded by firing a shot at an alleged shooter, Philadelphia Police Inspector DF Pace told NBC Philadelphia. A suspect dropped the gun and fled the scene, authorities said.
Fourteen people were trapped in the crossfire. Two men and a woman later died at the hospital from gunshot wounds.
Officers did not reveal the identities of the dead or injured, but according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, one of the victims was a 25-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman.
Blood is seen at the scene of a deadly shooting at night on South Street in Philadelphia on Sunday, June 5, 2022.
(Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
Officers were still searching for the alleged shooters Sunday morning after the area between 2nd and 5th streets was closed overnight.
Inspector Pace said officers had recovered two weapons, one of which had an extended magazine, and “numerous” shell casings at the scene.
“You can imagine there were hundreds of people enjoying South Street, as they do every weekend, when this shooting broke out,” Inspector Pace told ABC.
South Street is a lively area of bars, restaurants and nightclubs in downtown Philadelphia, and has a regular police presence on weekends, especially during the summer months, authorities said.
The South Street incident was the second shooting in the area on Saturday. Police also responded to a shooting at around 11pm on some remote islands, where 13 bullet casings were found.
Inspector Pace said at a news conference Sunday that officers were investigating whether the two incidents were related.
The United States has seen 240 mass shootings so far in 2022, according to the nonprofit The Gun Violence Archive, which tracks mass shootings. The nonprofit defines mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed at once.
Four people were killed and at least 28 were injured in a series of mass shootings across the country on Saturday, including incidents in Pennsylvania, Texas, Arizona and Michigan.
This article is being updated