The Easter holiday this weekend was accompanied by a spike in violent crime around Philadelphia.
A spree of shootings and murders took place as temperatures climbed for the Easter holiday. The Philadelphia Police Department reported 20 shootings and four deaths in three days going into Monday.
That brings the total number of homicides in 2017 up to 92 as of April 17, a roughly 20 percent increase over this time last year, according to police crime stats. There were 278 homicides total in 2016.
Between Saturday and Sunday, 14 people were shot, two fatally. The violence included a double, a triple, and a quadruple shooting. The violence was spread across the city, from Kensington and Northeast Philly to North, Northwest, West, Southwest and South Philly, the Inquirer reported.
The last spurt of violence was early Monday, with two homicides and a triple shooting.
The triple shooting occurred around 1 a.m. Three males were going to a sandwich store on Whitaker Avenue above Hunting Park Avenue when they saw two men arguing outside the store and heard gunshots, police said, and jumped back in their vehicle. All thee were shot.
One, 22, was shot in the foot. Another, 24, was shot in the leg, and a 21-year-old in the car was shot in both legs. No arrest or motive was reported. The three transported themselves to Temple University Hospital.
At 2:07 a.m., police officers investigating a gunshot in Southwest Philadelphia found a 27-year-old male “bleeding profusely from his back” on the 6200 block of Woodland Avenue, according to the police report.
Hours later, police were called to the 600 block of East Clementine Street in Kensington around 5:45 a.m., where a 34-year-old male was found shot fatally in the head.
The investigations into the weekend violence were ongoing as of press-time Monday, with no arrests reported in any of the cases.
