Reports: At Least 5 People Shot in Philadelphia

A stock photo of police tape. Jeff Karoub/File via AP

At least five people were shot in Philadelphia on Aug. 15, about a day after six police officers were injured during a standoff with a suspect.

The latest mass shooting took place at around 4:30 p.m. local time, NBC Philadelphia and 6ABC reported.

The shooting happened in Philadelphia’s Logan section on the 5800 block of North 15th Street, 6ABC reported.

The five victims are between the ages of 17 and mid-20s. They were all rushed to a nearby hospital, and one victim was listed in critical condition.

“They may have been running after that because it appears there’s a stretch for almost a block suggesting at least to us preliminary that someone was chasing him,” said Police Commissioner Richard Ross to the news outlet.

Detectives said that the shooting may have been targeted.

“There was (sic) some chairs up about a block and a half, leading us to believe the individuals, the victims, were probably seated when they were targeted,” Ross told CBS Philadelphia.

According to the NBC affiliate, the shooting was less than 3 miles from last night’s shootout with police on Aug. 14.

The victims were apparently shot in the hands, arms, or legs, police told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

No arrests have been made.

Other details about the incident are not clear.

Shootout Suspect Revealed

Maurice Hill, who authorities said had at least a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun when he opened fire on officers serving a drug warrant, has on his record multiple arrests in Philadelphia and adjacent Delaware County between 2001 and 2012, according to online records. Hill is accused of shooting six officers, The Associated Press reported.

Maurice Hill in a file mugshot and a still image taken from a video showing a man exiting a building with his hands up in Philadelphia after an hours-long standoff early Aug. 14, 2019. Bill Trenwith via AP; Philadelphia Police Department

He has convictions for an array of crimes that include assault, perjury, fleeing and eluding, escape, and weapons offenses.

Hill, 36, served two stints in state prisons—three, counting a return for a probation violation. He was also hit with a 55-month federal prison term over a pair of convictions for being a felon in possession of firearms.

Pennsylvania prison officials said Hill served about 2.5 years on drug dealing charges and was paroled in 2006, and then did more than a year for aggravated assault before being released in 2013.

Police take shooting suspect, Maurice Hill, into custody after an hourslong standoff with police, that wounded several police officers, in Phil. on Aug. 15, 2019. Elizabeth Robertson/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP

Facts About Crime in the United States

Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)(pdf).

The rate of violent crimes fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI’s UCR, which only reflects crimes reported to the police.

The violent crime rate dropped by 74 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the BJS’s NCVS, which takes into account both crimes that have been reported to the police and those that have not.

The FBI recently released preliminary data for 2018. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January to June 2018, violent crime rates in the United States dropped by 4.3 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.

While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend. Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4, according to an Epoch Times analysis of FBI data. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.