Philadelphia Police Announce Arrest Of Teen In Shooting Of 7 People Outside Golf & Social Club, Highlight Encouraging Trend
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Philadelphia Police announced an arrest in a major case Wednesday, as well as encouraging trends in the city's fight against gun violence.
A 16-year-old boy now faces seven counts of attempted murder for a March 26 shooting outside of the Golf & Social Club on Delaware Avenue in Fishtown. Police are still looking for a second shooter.
"We've always believed that people know who was involved," Philadelphia Police Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Naish said. "We got one of them. Now we're doing everything we can by tracing the steps and looking into the connection of the individual we have in custody, but so far, we don't have the second person."
In a virtual news conference, officials also announced a slight downward trend in homicides and shooting victims in the past three weeks. Meanwhile, firearms arrests to date are way up this year compared to last year.
"The first place we start is to try and focus on those areas with the most gun violence to get illegal guns off the streets, so I do believe there is a correlation there, particularly in our pinpointed and targeted grid," said Chief Inspector James Kelly.
But Mayor Jim Kenney warned that the city's gun violence problem is far from solved.
"This is a hopeful trend that we'll continue to feed and make sure things go in the right direction," Kenney said. "We may be sitting here a couple weeks from now with another story about a couple bad nights, so I don't want anybody to think that this is going to be over soon. It's going to be a long, long process."
City officials also announced a $22 million program to award grant money to community-based youth programs in a strategy to curb gun violence. Organizations can begin to apply for the funding on Aug. 6.
