Four people have been killed and four others injured in a shooting in Philadelphia, and a suspect has been taken into custody, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, citing local police.
A spokesperson for the Philadelphia police department confirmed to Reuters by email there were “multiple gunshot victims” but said no further details were immediately available.
Details of the gun violence the night before Independence Day were sketchy, but the shooting was reported to have erupted in the Kingsessing section of south-west Philadelphia.
Just before 8.40pm on Monday, police officers said they had apprehended a male suspect wearing a ballistic vest and recovered a rifle and handgun in a nearby alleyway, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Both the Inquirer and the Philadelphia television station WPVI, an ABC News affiliate, reported that two of the people shot were juveniles, but it was not clear whether they were among the dead.
No officers discharged their firearms during the arrest, police told the Philadelphia Inquirer.
At least six shell casings were visible on the street on the 1600 block of South 56th Street, not far from where one of the victims was located, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
WPVI video footage from the scene of the shooting showed several police squad cars parked near an intersection, lights flashing in the darkness, with portions of the street cordoned off with yellow and red crime-scene tape.
The shooting came a day after two people were shot dead and 28 others injured, about half of them children, in a hail of gunfire at an outdoor neighborhood block party in Baltimore, Maryland.
According to data collected from the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 26 mass killings in the US so far this year. The archive defines a mass killing as involving at least four people killed or injured by firearms, excluding the shooter.
English (US)