Philadelphia has set a new record for the number of homicides in a single year following another round of killings on Saturday, and with another full month left to go, 2021 is now the deadliest year in the city’s history.
With the latest shootings on Saturday, the number of homicide victims stands at 503. The last time the number crossed 500 was in 1990, during the crack cocaine epidemic. The Philadelphia Police Department has been keeping homicide records since at least 1960, and this year’s rate has now surpassed all previous years. There were 499 murders in 2020.
According to police statistics, at this time last year the number of homicide victims stood at 450, in 2019 it was 325, and in 2018 it was 307.
On Saturday, a 51-year-old man was shot at 3 p.m. at 10th and Brown streets in North Philadelphia. He was taken to the hospital but pronounced dead on arrival. This was followed by a 33-year-old who died from multiple shots in the Olney neighborhood around 7:10 p.m. Names of the victims have not been released and no arrests have been made.
Earlier on Friday, a man in his 30s was shot dead around 9 p.m. on the 7100 block of Ardleigh Street in East Mount Airy. Two days before that, on Wednesday, the 500th victim was recorded by the police, who identified the individual as Eloise Harmon.
Harmon, 55, was shot following a domestic dispute on Jackson and South 7th streets in South Philadelphia. Harmon’s husband, the suspect in the killing, was taken into custody on Friday.
Mayor Jim Kenney held a press conference just hours before Harmon’s death. He blamed firearms as being behind the increase in violence, and urged lawmakers to pass more stringent gun control laws. Kenney pointed at New York and Massachusetts where there were larger populations but fewer homicides, which he attributed to stricter laws.
“It’s terrible to every morning get up and have to go look at the numbers and then look at the news and see the stories,” Kenney said at the conference. “It’s just crazy and this needs to stop.”
His comments followed the fatal shooting of a pregnant woman and her unborn child. Jessica Covington, 32, was killed a few days ago when unloading gifts from her vehicle after returning from her baby shower, according to police reports.
“This heinous crime has sent shock waves throughout the country, and also highlights the intentional lack of regard that we are seeing for humanity,” Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said in a statement last week.
From The Epoch Times